Xan and Celia released the handshake after a single shake. "I say we should save Urre's for last to give us more time to formulate a plan," Xan stated, "so, that leaves three—wait, you supposedly have one already—so, we two more to find. This may not be as impossible as I thought, but it still seems pretty close to impossible." He released a nervous sigh and mumbled softly to himself, "how did Irin manage to convince me to go along with this?"

Though Celia heard his attempt at secretive mumblings, she decided to ignore the comment and looked to the closest thing she and Verbena had to an expert on the geography of the region. "Any idea where they could be? Like hints of certain towns that have similar characteristics to that of Orre?"

"Urre," he corrected her pronunciation, then paused to searches mental knowledge for an answer, "the only thing I can really think of is the Ulven, who seem to have a lot of green crops they export to other towns. I've never been in their capital, but they are very rich overall." His expression became one of slight nervousness as he paused, "the only problem is that they blame all humans for the fact that they are trapped in a world without light," he added a half-hearted laugh.

Celia frowned at his feeble laugh, "couldn't we at least try to talk to the Ulven and try to explain that we are trying to return the light to the world and we are not going to steal it? Maybe if we ask politely, then they'll willingly help us. It's not like we're trying to take over the world or anything, we're trying to save it."

"I've never had any real luck before they start trying to blast Irin and me with magic or their strange weapons," Xan admitted, and his dragon nodded in agreement and snorted as if the encounter reminded both of them of unpleasant memories. "I do not think we can get close of them to ask them to stop either."

At the mention of magic, Celia glanced to the warm bottle of fire she held in her hands. "Is there any way to talk to them? You said they trade to other towns for wealth right? Then they must have some minor tolerance to people who come to trade. Maybe they will at least be less hostile."

Xan seemed uncertain at first, then shrugged, "It could work, but they may only be interested in us if we have something to trade," he paused and mentally took an inventory on what he had on his person.

Celia did the same, but frowned as she gazed down to her options and realized how little she had left to trade, "I have a few magical items from Snouw, and some crystals from my home that were popular in Snow, but my rope has been split into two, and my food rations have dwindled over time," she looked to Xan. "I don't know how useful any of this could be."

"I do not have much in the way of trade either. I tend to avoid towns," he admitted as he scratched his head. "I guess we could go hunt for some furs to trade, and some meat for both us and to trade, but I doubt the ulvens will want any food from us anyway. They are the ones with all the food, and I can't offer anything magical either, as they have much stronger magic than I."

Celia hummed and mused over Xan's comments, then blinked and turned to him in pure surprise. "Wait, you have magic?"

In response to the question, Xan sent Celia a bewildered expression, "you don't?" He blinked, "then how do you survive out here without warming spells? How did your people survive the Dawn of Darkness?"

At first, Celia was unsure on how to answer and stood with a blank stare on her face, "no human back home has magic," she eventually croaked, "I guess we have the dragons for everything, including magic."

Xan nodded in understanding, then paused and mentally surveyed their options again. "As much as I do not want to go into Ulven territory again, I doubt we will get any headway with the Ulven unless we go to them," Xan sighs, "Though I think we should just wait for them to notice us at a border rather than entering their lands. I think we won't be perceived as threats or dangerous if we do that." 

'Perhaps they were just intimidated by Irin and would be willing to talk to us if you went without us,'  Verbena suggested.

When Celia relayed Verbena's idea to the other human and rider pair in the room, Xan took a moment to ponder the notion before he responded, "I've never tried going into Ulven territory alone, so maybe we can convince them without our dragons, but I do not know how well that will work."

His expression slowly changed to a grimace of uncertainty, "At least they will notice us on the edge of their land. I do not think they would care as much about us if we were just random people on the streets of some random Roahlan town that took up some of the time they could be using to trade."

Celia nodded in understanding and took out the map she had taken with her, but only the east side of Roahla had labels. The west half had rough overhead drawings of the general landscape, but not even the towns, though marked, did not have labels. She showed Xan the map, "so where are the Ulven?"

Xan glanced at the map, then frowned slightly, "this isn't all that accurate," he stated, then pointed to the line of mountains on the edge of the map, "There's a coastline farther west of these mountains instead of a blank expanse, and there are too many ridges. This map's mountains are completely wrong, and there are way too many towns on this map." He glanced to Celia, "I cannot let this go unfixed, so do you mind if I write on this a bit to correct it the best I can?"

"I guess not if you plan on fixing it," Celia said, both grateful of have a fixed map but nervous about what people would say about it when she returned it back in Rien. "that way, if we get separated somehow I will at least have a map and will not be completely lost."

Xan nodded as he pulled a writing tool from his bag of supplies and filled in the missing parts of the map with the magical pen that never ran out of ink. He drew in a rough approximation of the coastline, then labeled the towns that still existed and put a small line through the dots of settlements that no longer existed.

When he was finally finished, he held the parchment in front of him at arm's length to survey the entire image at once. "There," he began, "that's the best I can do. It's not exact and I can't do anything but make a note about the number of ridges, but it is better than how it was."

Celia nodded in thanks and set her eyes down to the map. The first thing she noticed was Xan's strange lettering but decided not to ask about it and instead searched for where he labeled Ulven territory on the map.

Though there was no definite territory line, there was "Ulven Lands" written in the southwestern area of the map where there was supposedly something called a "forest," though Celia had no idea what that meant.

"So where are we right now?" Celia glanced to Xan for guidance as she spread the map out so both of them could view the map at the same time.

The dragonet and dragon moved their heads so they could see over their respective riders' shoulders and see the map as well.

"We're in this general area," Xan pointed to a general area southwest of Urre, "so we need to get out of this cave, then fly south. The forest has a few large animals our dragons can hunt for food if they need it while we are in ulven lands."

Celia nodded and folded the map up, then returned it to its proper place into Verbena's saddle bag and put up all of her other possessions scattered around the cave room. After a pause, she retrieved her smaller bag and began to load it with a few rations, the remaining crystals, the fire magic bottle, and a small sealed cup that could be packed with snow and warmed for a source of water. When she could not find her knife, she remembered that the knife's pieces were scattered in the snow at the location of the scuffle she had with Xan before they became allies.

Xan's face reflected a look of confusion as he watched Celia pack, "what are you doing?" He paused and waited for Celia to give an answer.

Once she finished packing, she slung the pack onto her shoulder. "Let's get going," she flashed an excited smile, then recovered her face in hands with the standard protective wear and mounted Verbena.

'To the light!' Verbena cheered, then galloped out of the room without waiting for the other two to also prepare.

Xan blinked and Irin made a slightly annoyed snort. "Wait up!" Xan yelled as he quickly put his protective gear on, then leaped onto Irin's back. Once his rider was safely mounted in his proper place, the male dragon raced after Verbena with the same amount of contagious excitement as the dragonet.

Verbena burst through the excavated snow tunnel and spread her wings for flight, then burst into the air. After a moment of hesitation, the dragonet glanced back to allow Irin a bit of time to catch up. However, once the two males were close enough by Verbena's abstract threshold, the dragonet sprang into the air with her powerful limbs and a dramatic flurry of snow.

Irin released a huffy noise as he emerged from the subterranean world, then exploded into the air as he gave chase to the young female dragons. He roared softly in an attempt to get the two to stop and wait for him, but Verbena was too excited to slow down as she headed southwest.

"HEY! WAIT!" Xan yelled at the top of his lungs, but his voice lost the battle against the wind and did not reach Celia's or Verbena's ears.

Slightly frustrated, Irin growled in determination as he strained his muscles to increase his speed to his absolute limit, but even his top speed barely outpaced the smaller dragonet's normal flight speed.

Eventually, Celia noticed the two males behind them and their struggle to catch up to Verbena and glanced forward to the dragonet. 'maybe we should slow down and let the boys catch up.'

Verbena paused, then slowed down to a semi-lazy glide, 'fine, but they need to learn to fly faster.' She pouted slightly in her deflated excitement as Xan and Irin caught up to Celia and Verbena.

Once Xan was within Celia's earshot through yelling, he looked to her, "How do you even know where you are going?"

Verbena huffed as if it was obvious, 'You said southwest, so we fly southwest.' Undeterred by the two male's lack of directional skills, she briefly sped up and watched Irin struggle to keep up out of her peripheral vision.

After the female slowed back down and Irin could catch back up, the dragon relayed what Verbena had said to Xan. Surprised, the human male looked to Celia, "how do you know if this is the correct direction?"

Verbena glanced to the sky, then back to Irin with a dumbfounded expression and emitted a confused sound from her vibrating vocal cords, 'You can't feel the Magna or read the stars? Why didn't your parents teach you?'

Irin exhaled in confusion before he admitted to Xan that even he had things to learn from Verbena and Celia.

Celia decided to check their direction using the compass, and carefully retrieved the object in question and held it in her gloved hand. She grasped the navigation tool in her palm and read the north-pointing needle, and saw that she and Verbena were traveling roughly southwest. "We're traveling southwest," she yelled over the wind and looked to Xan, then glanced back to the compass to double-check her reading.

Xan was silent for a few moments, then gazed down to the ground and took note of their seemingly bleak surroundings as he scanned for the landmarks that marked the beginning of Ulven territory.

For several more lengths, the land continued to pass under them without much change. Except for the shadows, the mountains cast and a few dark dots that marked possible cave openings,  the white and barren land seemed inhospitable, even to those that lived in, or under, the land of Roahla. Even the glow of the city of light was beyond the limits of a dragon's sight and only the moon and the stars graced the sun-forsaken land with their presence.

Suddenly, the reached a valley swallowed by a swath of black of earth, and Irin moved to land without verbal instructions from his rider.

Verbena blinked and glanced to Celia, and the two silently agreed to follow him in the spiraling downwards glide. The two dragons landed softly in the thinned layer of snow and looked out to the sea of brown and deep green mounds.

"What are those?" Celia looked to the dark brown and black mounds lined with rings of green needles. The largest foreign objects were more than twice Celia's height, and the snow could not get within a radius of the structures roughly equal to the mound's height. Upon closer inspection, Celia noticed that tiny specks seemed to move and squirm on the sides of the mounds.

"Those are the markers that we have found the Ulven lands," Xan replied in a dramatic voice.

Author Notes!

Thank you for reading! If you likes the chapter, please feel free to vote or comment!

I'm going to try something new here:

Xan and Celia have reached the Ulven lands! Will they find the next ray of light?

Find out next time!