Our Journey to Caratha

Uncle let out a quick sigh then said "Now that we are done with that lets get going, wouldn't want us to be found and killed now would we?"

Despite the joking attitude of Delmar the atmosphere was still rather solemn, all three of us were racked with worry though we tried not to show it. Would we ever see our family again, and if so surely all of our lives were about to change forever whether we liked it or not.

So all three of us just silently walked forward to stand beside Delmar waiting for his signal.

Soon enough he saw that we had prepared ourselves mentally as best three young dragons could and nodded.

"Let's be off, we will have to take a slight detour as to throw potential trackers off of our tail, so the journey shouldn't take more than a couple weeks."

And with that the blue dragon leapt into the sky and we followed suit.

--------- A week later ----------

Our journey had taken us west across the miles of grass and straight over the open ocean with no land in sight.

The vast expanse of water had continued until now as on the horizon could be seen the faint outline of sheer white cliffs peeking into view.

After a week of flying with no rest my sisters and I were quite exhausted and desperately needed rest to recover so that if the need arose we would be ready for battle.

Having also seen the upcoming land Delmar spoke for the first time in the last week since setting off.

"Up ahead is our first stop, the isle of regalia, it is situated in the center of the vast ocean that the mortal races have named The Expanse. If you remember I told you about a detour, well this is it. The island is located between three of the five continents, one being the veiled continent where we just came from and the other two Caratha and Aregula. We will be able to throw any trackers off here because they will have to guess which way we went."

As we grew closer to the island in the distance I was able to see more and more of what was actually on the island. Along the edge of the island stood a white cliff that looked to be several hundred feet tall. And on the interior of the island was a forest that surrounded a massive dormant volcano.

We flew straight over the cliffs and forest and went straight into the volcano's caldera, which as the volcano had been dormant for such a long time was just a massive crater that had grass growing in it.

As we descended down I caught sight of a heard of animals that looked like elk but had two pairs of hind legs in addition to the normal par or front legs.

'Must be some sort of magical beast.'

Soon enough we landed and my sisters and I pretty much collapsed from exhaustion.

"he I almost forgot how tiring a journey like that is for you young ones, get some rest we will leave at first light." Delmar said.

Without any response from us we all fell asleep.

Just before dawn I woke up to see Delmar sitting on up on the edge of the caldera looking in the direction that we had come from.

As I was already awake I decided to make my way over to him, so I leapt into the air and flew to his side, landing with a dull thud a small distance away from him.

For a few minutes we sat there in silence with him seemingly not even registering my presence, then all of a sudden he turned and spoke to me with what seemed like a slightly sad expression.

"Valorian what is your plan for the future?"

His question caught me by surprise as all my other interactions with the dragon had been of him being seemingly upbeat and not having a care in the world.

'What is my plan for the future?'

"I seek to right all the wrongs done to us and our kind, we have gone on to long suffering in silence." I replied.

"That will do kid, that will do."

And with that our short conversation came to an end and we continued to stare across the dark horizon until the sun started to peak above the sea casting a light orange hue across the sky.

Seeing the time had come Delmar turned around and flew back to where my sisters were sleeping. I quickly followed him before waking my sisters and telling them it was time to leave.

Apollonia was the first of them to wake, looking up at me with a half asleep look she said "It's already morning?"

I nodded then went to make sure that Corentine was getting up as well, in the morning light her white scales shone like a fresh coat of snow on a winters day. As I approached her she raised her head and looked at me before nodding in my direction as if to tell me she was awake and ready to leave.

'We really need to do something about her lack of speech.'

Well its not like we ever didn't understand her but it could pose a problem down the line with others.

Seeing that we had all woken up and had signaled him that we were ready for the next portion of our journey Delmar took flight again with the three of us following close behind.

This time we headed northwest obviously in the direction of our destination. Once we left our island sanctuary we continued flying over the open ocean, this continued for several days but on the fourth day I caught sight of a few dots on the horizon.

"Uncle what is that, over there?" I asked while motioning towards the dots I saw.

"Those young Valorian are what the mortals call ships." Delmar responded.

I thought to myself that if these were mortal vessels then we should probably avoid them, but seeing uncles nonchalant attitude made me reconsider.

"you are probably wondering if we need to worry, even with your superb vision now that we are closer more likely than not they have already caught sight of us, and no sane mortal would attack a group of four dragons while on the open ocean." He continued.

I nodded in response and our steady flight resumed, after around twenty minutes or so the ships were in full view so I looked closer, and saw that they didn't seem to be very large ships or at least that is what I assumed.

Soon enough we flew almost straight over them, and when I looked at the decks of the ships I could see crowds of what looked like humans but they had the ears of different animals and some even had tails. They had most definitely seen us now as they were all looking up at us and some were pointing in our direction.

'We must be getting close to our destination, uncle did say that we were going to the beast man continent. '

I then refocused on our flight, keeping pace with uncle as best I could with our family flight prodigy right in front of me.

After another half day of flight more dots filled the horizon followed by the outline of land in the distance.

I guess uncle saw this as well because we changed course slightly so that we wouldn't fly directly over them, almost circling the with the outline of the land on our left side.

We continued this until there were no more ships in sight, which probably meant that there were no cities near the area, so we continued our flight directly towards the land mass.

When we were almost over the land uncle spoke "Welcome to Caratha."