“Where could they have gone?” Vashti demanded of the dwarf, who had no answers to give her. When the two mercenaries had all but tumbled down the path around mid-morning, babbling about being eaten by a huge dragon before fleeing into the forest, she had scrambled up it alone, only to find an empty, windswept terrace, with no trace of the others. She’d found no other way off the mountain, only stairs that lead up to the base of the crystal spire and the summit which was just as barren. Having been three days now, Baxor had insisted that if there was a dragon up there, it could easily have swooped down out of the air, eaten her friends and been gone long before the two fools had found their way down. But she wouldn’t believe it. “Go back to your tribe, lass,” the dwarf advised in his normal gruff tone sitting by the fire he’d tended all night near the edge of the forest, against her wishes… and stern warning that even here, the treants wouldn’t allow it. “You’ll not likely to see them again. At least not in any condition you’d want to.” Then, looking up to the head of the path as the sun rose, she could have sworn there was movement along it. Hours later, near high sun, she stood by the foot of the steep, treacherous trail in fuming impatience as Torryn led Syn, Ytharra, Garuu and a strange human woman with platinum hair as well as piercing grey eyes, down from the mountain. Greeting them with a scolding; “Where have you been? I searched the whole mountain and there was no sign of you. Baxor insisted you’d been eaten by the dragon, Darcassan’s mercenaries babbled about when they run by.” Then taking stock of the party’s composition she added; “Who’s she… and where’s Darcassan… did the dragon eat him?” “Easy,” Torryn tried to stem the tide of questions and incriminations coming from the small wild elf to quickly to be addressed. “This is Silmythael… she lives in the spire atop the mountain. We were her guests for what seemed like a single night to us… but I’m guessing it was longer for you. Darcassan fled by teleport spell, I’m assuming back to Everlund...” “Before I could eat him,” the dragon in human interrupted in a threatening growl, but with a capricious smirk, delighting in the reaction from both the wild elf and dwarf as they recognized the implications of the statement; she was the dragon! “Begging your pardon mistress dragon, but you left them bones just lying around. If you didn’t want them harvested you ought to have put up some kind of warning,” Baxor grumbled, more humbly than normal. “Be at ease master dwarf,” she smiled with mild amusement. “Whatever you gain from those wretches will be the first thing they’ve ever done for another. I left them there to rot all these years because they weren’t worth my effort to dispose of. Have at them with my blessing!” Then she turned her focus on the small wild elf, who stood dumbfounded before her, and decreed; “As for you, Vashti of the Windstar tribe… I’m given to understand that you’re here against your elder and father’s will. I have great respect for the wild elves and I’m certain that you can fend for yourself, but even I, who have spent five centuries in seclusion, know that dark times have come upon the forest, so your tribe may have more need of you… than you have of them.”