Quests & Challenges

[center][b]Day 30[/b] [item=Blacksand Barnacles] [b]Material = Writing[/b][/center] Slowly, the boat took shape. It had been a respectable fishing vessel, tough enough to have made it through the destruction mostly intact, and now the holes in its hull were patched carefully with sections taken from other boats. It wouldn't be possible to take off from it in the water without capsizing, but there was just about enough room to manouver on its deck, between the sleeping benches, supplies box, oars, and the new mast. None of them were experts at sailing – nobody in Stilt had been, seeing how unpredictable it was compared to rowing – but they agreed that it couldn't hurt. Worst case scenario, Kosan could use it as an emergency booster. They scavenged as much food as they could. Kosan cut leftover scraps of sailcloth into bandages, packed healing herbs into his healer's kit. Brooke disappeared for an afternoon and came back with a handful of rabbits and squirrels. Coralle dragged containers from the ocean and spent hours in the rain, carefully filling their waterskins as full as she could. The clouds lowered. The barrier at the horizon seemed to thicken, edging closer and closer to the shore. Occasionally, they would see flickers at the edges of their vision, indistinct shapes in the water illuminated for fractions of seconds by the lightning. Gavil squirmed in their sleep, mumbling incomprehensibly. Their fever rose, broke, rose again. Their quickening heartbeat forced blood through their stitches. Kosan did what he could, but even in the moments when they stabilised, their wound continued to darken. He had never seen necrosis before, but he had heard of it, and he knew how serious it was, how it inevitably heralded amputation or death. "Gavil's hanging by a thread," he said, finally. They were sitting around the fire in the evening, eating a meagre meal – most of their food was already packed into the boat, and rationing would be important. "We have no idea how long it'll be before they can get proper treatment. We can't waste any more time. Tomorrow morning, first light. It has to be then." "We're as prepared as we're going to get," agreed Coralle. "I don't think we can fit any more supplies." "So, this is it, then." Brooke looked out to the angry horizon. "We're really doing this. Sornieth or bust." "Sornieth or bust," confirmed Kosan. "One way or another, this ends tomorrow."

[center][b]Day 31[/b] [item=Darkwood Titan] [b]Food (Insects) = 20-30 matches[/b][/center] The storm was enraged. The winds whipped up the ocean into a frenzy. Torrential rain poured from the sky, so thick that one could barely see more than a few metres ahead. The howling gales and crashing lightning were deafening, almost covering the chorus of shrieks from the horde assembled at the top of the beach. The group struggled to push the boat into the ocean. It swayed dangerously as they leapt aboard. Coralle and Brooke picked up oars, Kosan stopping to prop Gavil up in a secure corner before joining them. "No time for the sail!" he yelled over the noise. "Just go, fast as you can!" They rowed desperately, feverishly. The waves threatened to capsise them at any moment, the rain and sea spray blurring the line between air and water. The winds roared against them, so that even a moment of weakness would undo their hard-won progress. It felt like the entire world was against them – it was made worse now that they knew this was true. It felt like hours by the time they made it through the first-quarter mile. Their senses of time and distance were destroyed by the assault, their limbs aching and claws going numb from cold. Kosan risked a glance backwards, but as he opened his mouth to yell that they had made it to the halfway point, all sound stopped. It was violent, like someone had slapped the world, and left a horrible ringing in their ears. Kosan's cry was lost in the silence, muffled like in a nightmare. The moment held, lasted until the ringing stopped, and then the world seemed to explode with screaming. [b][i]TOO FAR.[/b][/i] The Shade wasn't whispering any more. It was a shriek so loud the words were almost lost, so loud it forced the group on to the deck, clamping claws over their ears. [b][i]WE HAVE NOT BEEN CLEAR, BUGS. YOU ARE NOTHING. YOUR LIVES WERE SPARED FOR THE SUSTENANCE YOUR PAIN BRINGS, AND FOR A BRIEF MOMENT OF ENTERTAINMENT. YOU HAVE PROVEN YOURSELVES TO BE UNWORTHY OF THIS.[/b][/i] The ocean ahead seemed to warp. Shapes formed in the waves, indistinct at first, their edges becoming sharper as they rose from the water. Eyes opened. Teeth and claws flashed. Unnerving howls rose. Wings unfurled. [b][i]YOU HAVE CAUSED FAR TOO MUCH TROUBLE TO BE LEFT ALIVE.[/b][/i] "No," breathed Brooke, the first to realise what she was looking at. "It can't be. It can't-" There was a sudden scraping noise from behind them. The group whirled around, expecting something to be climbing on the boat. But there was nothing. Instead, Gavil crawled out from their corner, pulling themself to their feet by the boat's rail with unnatural, jerky movements. Something like tar soaked through their bandages to cascade onto the deck. They coughed once, twice, expelling more tar from their throat with the third. In that moment, Kosan and Coralle came to the same realisation as Brooke. Coralle span in place, desperately scanning the sky, until she locked eyes with one of the things flapping awkwardly out of the water – a large, bulky shape, the edges of a mane just barely visible in the lightning, with the same dark green eyes as her. "You can't!" Kosan screamed at the sky. "You can't do this! This – this is obscene!" The Shade's answer came from all around them, a rough and scratchy cry from what seemed like a thousand throats. From the horde of dead dragons ahead, it was a noise too chaotic to make out proper words, but in the boat, repeated in Gavil's voice, it was all too clear. "Enough of this, little bugs. Die for us." [center]--- Matches done: 20 ---[/center] Nothing they had faced could have compared to this. The dead dragons were mindless, howling and attacking at the Shade's whims just like any other horde of frenzied creatures, but they wore the faces of friends and family. Kosan staioned himself at the boat's tiller, firing shots of magic as he desperately tried to control their tossing and turning, doing his best not to meet their eyes. The corpses' bloated flesh and broken bones were torn through far more easily than that of a livng dragon, and for a moment Kosan felt a spark of hope, until he looked too far to the left and met the eyes of a young Skydancer, spitting failing little scraps of magic at him as it scrambled for purchase. The face was half rotted, but Kosan still recognised his young cousin. His grip on the tiller only held because his claws were stiff and numb from the cold. Brooke and Coralle had a more immediate problem. Gavil took to the air, rocking the boat dangerously, and barreled straight towards them with far more speed than the lumbering corpses. They slipped through Coralle's grab and buried their claws in Brooke's shoulder. She screamed, but then twisted, throwing both of them to the ground. Gavil wasn't dislodged, and went for her face with their teeth until Coralle tore them off her, slamming them into the ground. They retched, blood and tar splattering their and Coralle's faces. "See it yet, bugs?" The voice was unmistakably Gavil's, but the tone was twisted horrifically. "You are all ours, in life and in death!" Coralle pinned them to the deck, stil ltrying her best not to harm them too much. "Get out." Gavil laughed an alien laugh, and with a single wrench, dislocated their shoulder, allowing them to wriggle out from under her and take to the sky again. "Do you still think you can save this one?" they called mockingly downwards. "It was ours from the moment it was born! Oh, it put up some pitiful resistance, but all things are consumed by the Shade!" A wave threw Kosan to the deck, and the waves gripped the boat, tossing it freely around. Kosan scarmbled to his feet and made for his post, but Brooke shoved him aside, taking the tiller for herself. "Brooke?" Her face was set in grim determination, one wing pressed against her wound. "We'll never make it like this. Kos, the sail." His eyes widened, but he nodded. "Coralle, cover!" he yelled as he ran for the ropes. Coralle leapt up and roared a challenge to the horde. She fought expertly, like a legendary warrior, but up close, Kosan could see how she tried to minimise each opponent's suffering, and the exhausted, dull pain in her eyes. For all her strength and stoicism, he realised, Coralle had taken Stilt worst. She had loved it, even if it hadn't understood her, and now all that power she had cultivated to protect it was being used to put it down. They had all loved it. Stilt was their home, all their family, all their friends. It had been taken from them, taken more completely than they had ever known, and now all they had was each other. The Shade had almost destroyed them utterly, and it had done so while consdiering them nothing more than livestock and vermin. It was rage, in the end, that motivated Kosan to hoist the sail and turn all of his wind magic on it, unleashing reserves he hadn't even known he possessed. The boat shot forward, towards the wall of stormclouds, Brooke struggling to hold it steady. The horde let out a unified screech as it followed, Gavil at its head. Kosan collapsed, but he didn't allow himself time to rest. He took one deep breath, pulling together scraps of magic, forcing blood from a stone, and took out the Heart of Hope. In the darkness, it shone brightly. The horde seemed to flinch, collectively, before falling on the boat. Brooke was knocked to the deck. Coralle leapt over her, covering her as well as she could, but there were too many of them for her to fight off. Gavil shot past the boat, wheeled around, and went for Kosan. "No!" they screamed. "Insect! Worm! Worthless little thing!" Kosan forced himself to meet their eyes as they flew towards him, claws extended, tar pouring from every orifice in their face. "For Stilt," he said, and unleashed his breath. The Heart cracked, more like ceramic than gold, light streaming from the spiderweb in its surface. It remained intact for a single frozen moment, then shattered. Pure white light exploded outwards in every direction, blindingly bright, brighter than anything they had ever seen. They couldn't see anything, but they could all hear a bloodcurling collective scream from the horde, matched by the scream in their heads. It was pure chaos, that seemed to go on for an eternity. When the light finally faded, Kosan cracked his eyes open, blinknig away the dark spots in his vision. The first thing he saw was the delicate shards of gold scattered across the deck, sparkling in a new light. Raising his head, the sight took his breath away. A tunnel through the clouds, perfectly round, with a bright light shining from the other side, tinted a delicate shade of light blue. All around it, the lifeless bodies of the Stilt Sanctuary dragons fell from the sky. The wind was gone, replaced by a warm, salt-scented breeze from the tunnel. The inside of his skull was silent, a true, natural silence. Coralle fell back onto the deck, panting from exertion. It only lasted a moment, before she forced herself to her feet and picked up an oar. Kosan looked over at Brooke. She was still on the deck, clutching her wounds, but she didn't seem to be feeling the pain. She was staring into the blue light in wonder. He picked up an oar and made to start rowing, but as he looked into the water, he froze. A small, spindly shape was sinking rapidly, a hint of yellow scales just barely visible in the light. Kosan threw the oar at Brooke and dove. He ignored his screaming lungs, forced his limbs to move further and faster, folding his wings against his body to make himself an arrow as he shot down towards Gavil. Bubbles spilled from his mouth and nose as he reached them, pulling their frail form in close as he wheeled around and swam for the surface. It was more difficult this way, especially weighed down, and he gradually began to feel the pain of his empty lungs. Unfolding his wings, he flapped desperately up, vision swirling from lack of air. He was certain that he was about to take a lungful of seawater, when at last he breached, gasping. He floated there for a while, keeping Gavil's head above water as he regained his breath. His whole body felt too heavy to move. It was only when he finally heard the yelling that he turned to look at the boat, and realised that the light was diminishing. Kosan swam as fast as he could towards the closing tunnel, Gavil in tow. He felt himself falter, his overworked limbs finally beginning to give up, the boat moving faster than he could keep up. Brooke and Coralle were distant specks, but he could see the panic in their movements. He felt an intrusion, something trying to reestablish a connection with his mind – a connection, he now realised, that had been there as long as he could remember. A connection that the Heart had broken, to give him one fleeting chance at escape. Growling, he pulled Gavil up and gripped them by the scruff between his teeth. He opened his wings, and with the final dregs of energy in his legs, pushed himself up, flapping away from the water. Turning into the breeze, he glided for the boat. He fell just barely short, weak claws grasping for the rail but slipping off easily, until Coralle grabbed ahold of him, pulling him onto the deck, where he released Gavil and lay there, breath coming in painful gasps. He wasn't so far gone as to miss when the boat finally emerged from the tunnel. Looking back, he saw an expanse of black cloud, extending far above into an incomprehensibly massive dome, a hole in the side closing and smoothing over as if it was never there. Looking forward, he thought his eyes must not be adjusting properly. There was the ocean, sparkling in a shade of soft blue-green he had never seen before, and a blinding light blue sky above, but both seemed to go on forever. He had never seen so far in his life. All he could really understand was the heat, a warmth emanating from the sky that covered his body and sank down to his bones, filling him with a comfort he had never known. Next to him, Gavil coughed, spitting up seawater. All traces of the black tar has been washed away by the water. "T-take that," they mumbled. "G-Gavil's the strongest..." They trailed off into unconsciousness. Kosan thought that looked like a good idea. Still, he shakily pulled himself up into a sitting position. He saw Brooke first, sitting on her haunches with her head raised and he eyes closed, an expression of perfect contentment on her face, despite her wounded state. Coralle, on the other side of the boat, looked more shocked, still clutching her oar, holding it like she didn't know what else to do with herself. "We did it." Kosan's voice was weak and scratchy. "We won." "We won," repeated Coralle slowly, voice equally weak. "We survived. We didn't -" She slumped to the ground in relief. "I didn't lose you," she said, and her voice raised into a tired laughter, quiet yet pure. Kosan joined her, slightly hysterical in his delirium. Brooke joined in too, louder, and jumped suddenly up from her perch. Before any of them could react, she jumped into Coralle's arms, flung her own arms around the large Obelisk's neck, and kissed her. Coralle's surprise only lasted a moment, before she returned the embrace. That made a lot of sense, actually. Feeling his consciousness finally start to slip away, Kosan rolled himself over clumsily, and stared into the blue sky, smiling. They had done it. No matter what happened next, they had won. [center]Final stats: [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/91694291][img]https://www1.flightrising.com/rendern/350/916943/91694291_350.png[/img][/url] Kosan: Level 12, survived [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/91650239][img]https://www1.flightrising.com/rendern/350/916503/91650239_350.png[/img][/url] Brooke: Level 12, survived [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/91523616][img]https://www1.flightrising.com/rendern/350/915237/91523616_350.png[/img][/url] Coralle: Level 12, survived [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/92090803][img]https://www1.flightrising.com/rendern/350/920909/92090803_350.png[/img][/url] Gavil: Level 5, survived coma coin toss [i]Thank you for following Exile's Road! An epilogue chapter will be posted shortly.[/i][/center]

The wind wasn't gentle out here. It still howled in their ears, still tried to push the boat off course, without intelligence now but still with urgency.

None of them cared. It was warm, it didn't smell like death, and it was just about predictable enough for them to sail instead of rowing. Kosan spread his feathers to feel the breeze as he worked the tiller, ocasionally stepping back and forth between it and the mast, adjusting the sail to capture as much wind as he could, keeping them on a straight line away from the storm. The Cold Lands were a speck on the horizon now, a faintly swirling spot of black against the endless blue.

As he finished an adjustment, he felt the shake of fatigue in his limbs again. "Brooke," he called, "are you okay to take over?"

"My turn again?" Brooke peeled herself off the bench, reluctantly removing her head from Coralle's shoulder. "'Kay. Still just holding it steady?"

"Yep." The two carefully shuffled past each other, and Kosan sat down next to Gavil. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

Gavil sluggishly raised their head, looking up at him with glazed-over eyes. "Bad," they replied, refusing to elaborate. Kosan could see spots of fresh red on their bandages. There wasn't much he could do about it – he had already tightened their stitches, to a loud protest, but the blood clotted slowly, weakly.

They were up, at least. They had said very little since waking, preferring to curl up and silently stare at the vanishing Cold Lands. Kosan didn't pry. He could only imagine how traumatising the escape had been for them.

The escape. Sometimes it hit him all at once, and he couldn't think about anything else. The escape had happened. He was on the other side of the storm, and his friends were here with him. It didn't feel real. He fluttered his wings impatiently, endlessly frustrated by the inability to take off. He wanted nothing more than to leap into that endless sky and fly as far as he could.


The sun set. The unfiltered sunlight gently darkened, returning, from the group's perspective, to what they were used to. The horizon turned gold, then seemed to light itself on fire, before finally darkening to a coral hue and fading into black. In that darkness, there was still light; thousands of tiny points against the black, and something like a second, cold sun, more comparable to how the sun had looked through the storm.

They watched it speechlessly.

It occured to Brooke, as she curled up next to Coralle on the bench, that she might be dead. It seemed likely, to her, that their escape had failed, that this was the passage to an afterlife, that her real body was sinking to the bottom of the ocean right now.

It took her a long time to get to sleep, but when she did, it was long and dreamless.


When the wisps of white cloud in the sky thickened and turned grey, terror gripped the vessel, but all that came was wind and rain.

To Coralle, squinting into the downpour as she held the tiller steady, this was less unnerving. She felt mismatched with the perfect beauty of the outside world. That there was still suffering, that she had to pull her armour further up her back as a shield from the rain while her companions crammed themselves under the benches for shelter, that they had to bail out the boat while shivering from the chill, paradoxically made her feel better.

Perhaps it was because she knew this wasn't in service of anything. The pain she felt was hers, and hers alone. She would feel it, and it would fade, and nothing would be gained from it by anyone.

Compared to living as livestock, this was comforting.


Gavil wasn't feeling much of anything, other than hunger.

They watched from the corner as Kosan and Coralle divided up the rations, Brooke guiding the boat. Maybe they would have been doing something before. They had always found it hard to sit still and stay quiet. It was part of why they had made such a terrible slave.

But now, all the energy had been drained, taken by the half-remembered nightmares in their coma, by their violent struggling against the Shade's influence. The skin-crawling feeling of being used as a puppet, of something vast and cold moving their body and speaking in their voice, was enough to make them never want to get up again, if only out of spite.

Everything felt numb, inside and out. Even the pain of their wound had settled into a vague ache that they were barely conscious of.

Maybe they could appreciate the sunrise another day. For now, all they wanted was to rest.


They floated on. There was no course other than avoidance. None of them had any idea where they were going, only that they had to get as far away as possible.

When Gavil was finally roused enough to climb the mast and take a short flight, they didn't see any land. They had found that the lights in the sky were the same every night, so they could be sure that they hadn't been turned around, but that didn't help them navigate.

Over days, it became mindless. All they did was keep the boat pointed forwards, occasionally raise the sail to catch the wind, and sort the dwindling supplies.

Kosan cut his rations in half, hoping the others wouldn't notice.


The heat was becoming oppressive now, the rain a welcome mercy. The waterskins lay open, makeshift funnels directing rainwater to fill them. Every time, the returns seemed smaller, the water level a little lower when the clouds dispersed.

How far had they gone? Without their starting point as a reference, none of them could even begin to guess. All they could do was keep going, hoping desperately for land.


"I love you," said Coralle quietly. She was lying on the deck with the rest of them, but she still managed to extend one of her wings to give Brooke some shade. "I'm sorry. It was selfish of me to try and keep you at arms length. I didn't want to let myself love someone I could lose."

"I get it." Exhaustion rendered Brooke's voice little more than a whisper. "It's okay. I love you too."


Slowly, Kosan awoke.

The first thing he became aware of was that he was lying in a bed, one softer than anything he could remember sleeping on. As he cracked his eyes open, the ceiling slowly came into focus. It was wooden, but it looked strange – dark and oddly rounded, with no visible nails, or even gaps betwen planks. It looked more like he was lying in the hollow of a tree than in a hut.

He slowly pushed himself up, fighting stiff, uncooperative limbs. Looking around, he saw that he was in a small room, containing only the bed and a table holding some scattered healer's supplies. A doorway lead down a corridor, and warm yellow sunlight streamed in through a window above his head, both made of the same smooth wood as the walls, and strangely misshapen, again looking like natural hollows.

Pushing the soft white blanket away and getting up, Kosan felt his claws sink into something soft. It took him a moment to place it – carpet, something almost unheard of in Stilt. Checking himself over, he found that he was completely healed, no traces left of the wounds he had suffered in the escape. How long had he been asleep?

His belt with the empty tome lay on the table. Kosan scooped it up and buckled it on. Feeling more sure of himself, he carefully, shakily set off along the corridor, carpet muffling his footsteps.

It lead into some kind of atrium. The entire building so far had been carpeted in the same dark, rich green, but here a large symbol was dyed into it in a lighter shade, a simplified tree. It was lit by a series of holes in the ceiling, letting in beams of sunlight.

The corridor continued opposite him into another small room, almost identical to the one he had left, except that it was empty, and the supplies on the table looked unused. More rooms branched off from the atrium, more of the same. Kosan turned around in a circle, examining them warily.

There were only two corridors that lead anywhere different, on either side of the one he had left. The one on the left lead up a ramp, which Kosan couldn't see the top of, but down which sunlight streamed. On the right was another room, but inside it -

"Gavil!" Kosan ran to their side. They lay curled up in the bed, fresh white bandages covering their chest. He stopped short when he saw the thin threads of soft green light floating around them, forming a fine, near-invisible net.

"Please, don't disturb them." Kosan jumped at the voice from behind him. Whirling around, he saw another dragon standing in the doorway; an old Snapper, wearing a set of large robes in shades of green. He could tell, even from here, that it was incredibly high quality fabric.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Cantre. I am a healer. I've been watching over your young companion." His voice was soothing, everything in his demeanour gentle as he approached. "All of you, in fact. You've been asleep here for two days. Your other companions awoke the first morning after we found you, but you were closer to starvation than them."

"Found us?" Nothing about this dragon was threatening, but Kosan was wary. "Where? And where are Brooke and Coralle?"

"You were floating a few miles off the coast. One of our fishing boats found you. And your friends are fine. They're upstairs now. I can take you to them, if you feel strong enough to walk."

Kosan looked back down at the bed. "Is Gavil..."

Cantre's brow furrowed. "Their wound is strange. The magic is helping, but it seems to resist healing. Still, they're a strong child. I have faith in their ability to pull through."

Kosan digested that for a while. Finally, he replied, "You can use magic for healing?"

Cantre looked shocked. "You didn't know? How? Where have you come from?"

"The others didn't say?"

A shake of the head. "They said they were waiting for you." Kosan felt an odd warmth at that.

"You said you could take me to them?"

Cantre nodded. "Follow me." Kosan followed him out of the room and up the ramp, into the light.

He blinked rapidly as his eyes adjusted, then gasped sharply. He was standing in the canopy of an unthinkably massive tree. Colours were everywhere, hundreds of different shades of leaves and flower petals, and banners hanging from more deep hollows, clearly coaxed somehow into growing into natural rooms. Dragons flitted about everywhere he looked, flying freely up and down the levels of this living wooden city.

"Kos!" He turned around just in time to see Brooke fling herself at him, pulling him into a hug, with Coralle at her heels. "You're okay! You are okay, right? They said you'd be okay, but you didn't wake up for days, so I thought -"

Coralle cut her off. "What were you thinking, starving yourself like that? Rationing I can understand, but a little longer and you would have died."

"It worked, didn't it? Are you guys okay?"

She sighed in exasperation. "We're fine. We've been recovering."

"Recovering, she says! Kosan, you're not going to believe what it's like here. They have a library, easily half the size of Stilt, and they just let you take things from it!"

"Huh," he said vaguely. "Sounds fancy."

"Yes, yes, very fancy." Gavil stalked up the ramp, pulling their mask over their face. "Woke me up with all your chattering. Now, can we tell them so I can go back to sleep?"

"Ah, yes." Cantre followed them up, looking quizzically at the group. "I don't mean to pressure, but we would very much like to know what happened to you."

"Right." Kosan looked at his friends for confirmation. They nodded back at him, faces set in determination.

They had made it out, beaten the Shade, but it was a small victory. As long as the Cold Lands existed, dragons would suffer and die as plaything of a power they could never hope to understand.

Unless they kept going. Unless they brought hope back.

"Okay." Kosan turned to Cantre. "Take us to whoever's in charge here. They need to hear what we have to say."


Once again, thank you for following this Pinkerlocke! I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope you were sufficiently pained and/or entertained by my work. Please feel free to leave comments or questions in this thread!