Border of the Eastern Wilds
For the first time since being Bonded, Rynn and Arokh enjoyed a long flight without being attacked. Even though Rynn suspected that it was largely a result of Morghus and Ebontyne's presence, she couldn't help feeling grateful. She actually got to look at the scenery for a change.
The viridian green of a huge forest covering the hills was spread below them, the tops of the trees rustling slightly in the wind. Now and again a bright fleck of colour would flick between the branches. Rynn guessed they were birds.
Gradually, the further east they went, Rynn realised the trees started to look sickly. The leaves took on a yellow cast, then brown. At last, they were flying above a forest of skeletons. Bare and decaying branches clawed at the sky in mute appeal, their brittle stick-fingers rasping against each other. Instead of brightly feathered birds, Rynn saw vultures and crows.
"Be on your guard!" Morghus shouted back to them. "We're about to cross the border."
"I guess that means we'll be attacked," Rynn remarked. "What by, I wonder?"
Then Morghus was swooping down lower. Still flying east at a good speed, he halted his descent several feet above the treetops, craned his neck down and breathed a steady stream of fire into the skeletal forest. As he climbed back up again, a terrible sound filled the air.
The trees were screaming.
From several points in the forest, bolts of lightning shot at the two dragons and their riders. Morghus evaded with the ease of one who's been through this before, then swept down again to burn a section of trees he'd seen an attack come from. Arokh had dodged as well, but hadn't known what to look for. Rynn and he scanned the dead trees through the rising smoke, waiting for another lightning bolt attack to tell them where an enemy was.
It came soon enough.
"Hold on!" Arokh shouted. He rolled aside to avoid a bolt then folded his wings and dropped like a stone, headfirst towards the ground. Jaws parting, crimson-gold flames blasted into the forest and caught the dry wood immediately. Ghastly screams rose in response to the inferno. Arokh's wings extended again and they soared up and off to another sentient tree.
"Arokh!" Morghus shouted after about five minutes of this. The black dragon flew closer to the red, their wingtips almost touching as they glided over the canopy. "We're past it." He broke away abruptly as lightning shot between them from behind. "We're over the border."
"That wasn't so hard," Arokh said.
"They're no real danger - not unless you're on the ground. They try to stun you, then if you crash into the ground close enough to any of them they'll try to eat you, whether or not you survived the fall." He pointed east with his head where the forest had ended and a blasted plain of cracked and blackened rock began. "This is the first part of the Wilds. We've already searched it from north to south. If we keep flying east we should eventually reach a swamp. That's where we'll begin."
"Do we have any idea what to look for?" Rynn shouted. "Navaros didn't hide all his stuff in a building or something?"
"He's certainly sheltered the things," Ebontyne called back, her voice sounding strange behind the helmet. "But whether that's underground or what... we don't know. Morghus and I acted on the policy that we search every corner."
"Like a needle in a haystack," Rynn said, but only loud enough for Arokh to hear. "We might have as little chance of finding a mirror or those jewels out here than we did of finding Delon in the Rift."