Claudia quickly pulled out the object she had recently used to attempt and make Rayla fall asleep, though it wasn't really that recent. She was glad she brought it along anyway, though, because maybe they could make the dragon fall asleep.

She hadn't ever really used it on a dragon before, since there weren't really a lot of situations in which she faced dragons and happened to have it with her.

"Claudia, whatever you're thinking, you probably shouldn't do it." Callum suggested, though she ignored him.

"Just cover your ears." She said. Callum still didn't seem to understand, but Rayla did. She covered her ears, and apparently by seeing Rayla do it, Callum and Ezran started to as well. So Claudia started playing it, waiting for the dragon to start to fall asleep.

It didn't seem to do anything at first, except make the dragon angry. But the dragon did start moving slightly different, so Claudia glanced at her friends to make sure they were running. Except they weren't running, but they were walking.

Probably in an attempt not to fall asleep, but it probably would've been more convenient. Claudia stopped playing, and gestured to her friends, "Go!"

The dragon seemed distracted by her, at the least. It was flying directly at her. Claudia managed to dodge, though only just. She tried to move quickly, since the dragon running into the cliff instead of her was making the rocks fall.

Callum turned towards Rayla, "Rayla, take Ez and run."

"What are you doing?" She asked, watching as he turned back towards Claudia, who was surprisingly good at dodging rocks.

"I need to go help Claudia." Callum answered, "Just take Zym and Ezran out of here."

"Callum, it's too dangerous. It's safer if you take Ezran and Zym." Rayla argued, "I'll go get Claudia."

"She's my friend and she's only in danger because of my idea. I'm going a-" Callum attempted to reply, but was cut off by Rayla, who was walking past him.

She's my friend too. A part of her wanted to say, though she didn't, because Claudia wasn't her friend. Not yet, anyway, but maybe she could be.

Rayla turned around briefly, "We're in this together."

She ran off towards Claudia, who was still distracting the dragon. She was faster than Callum, anyway, so she got there faster than he would've.

She didn't really have a plan, unfortunately. The dragon was flying around again, probably prepared to attack Claudia again.

Rayla grabbed Claudia's hand, "Come on."

"Got anymore ideas?" Claudia asked while Rayla was moving them a bit further down the pathway, though the dragon had a strategy of its own. Instead of attempting to run into them, it ran into the pathway up ahead, blocking them off from the others.

"Not really." Rayla said, watching as the dragon stared at them, and roared. She looked at Claudia and quickly added to her previous sentence, "Maybe if there was a way we could get it to move away out of the way, or if we could slow it down somehow..."

Claudia pulled out something strange, "I can slow it down."

"But that's-"

"Unless you have any ideas." Claudia stared at her, and Rayla sighed, "Fine."

"But first, maybe if we go the other way it'll follow us." Claudia suggested, "Then I'll slow it down and we'll find a way to get across."

"I have a way for that." Rayla commented, and started running with Claudia in the other direction, "So we want it to follow us?"

"Yep." Claudia was kind of smiling at this point. The dragon did start following them, as intended, though it started flying almost immediately faster than they could run, and landing in front of them.

Claudia used her magic to slow it down. Rayla didn't particularly like this part, but she still took Claudia's hand again and ran away, "Did it work?"

"It should've, but I guess we'll see." Claudia then glanced behind her. The dragon did seem to be going slow, though it wasn't as signifigantly as hoped. The dragon ran into the cliff, almost directly after they made it past that part.

"Will it wear off?"

"Eventually." Claudia replied, as they made it towards where the dragon had destroyed the pathway, "We probably shouldn't wait around for it to, though. So you have a plan for getting across?"

"Something like that." And then she took out one of her swords and jumped, still holding onto Claudia. She just barely managed to grab onto some of the cliff when they were falling, but it was difficult doing this with Claudia.

She looked down at Claudia, "This was a bad idea. A bad, impractical idea."

"Impractical is just another kind of practical." Claudia smiled, remembering a similar previous quote.

Rayla laughed a little bit, though it was still a bad time. Humans were so strange sometimes. It was convenient the dragon seemed to be confused enough about its speed that it wasn't attacking currently, though it'd probably figure it out soon enough.

She attempted to pull Claudia up a little bit more, and took her sword out and jumped towards the rest of the cliff. Honestly, they probably wouldn't have made it, except that was the moment the dragon attacked.

Usually, that would have been inconvenient, but the dragon had missed and attacked almost directly underneath them, which meant they fell on the dragon. Though it was difficult balancing on the dragon, the dragon was pretty close to the cliff.

Rayla and Claudia jumped, though with difficulty from being on a dragon, and grabbed onto the edge of the cliff, just barely.

Claudia set down the object she had recently gotten from Tinker, which made it appear like there were shadows, though quickly afterwards running away before the dragon could realize they were there.

Walking down the rest of the pathway was a lot easier without being attacked by a dragon, though they didn't see Callum and Ezran anywhere, which probably meant they had already made it across.

"You shouldn't have used your magic." Rayla eventually said, walking down the pathway. She didn't really want to ruin the moment, since they were sort of getting along.

Claudia shrugged, "It's not like there was anything else I could do."

"You rely on it too much." Rayla pointed out, "Have you ever considered trying to learn Primal Magic, like Callum did?"

She wasn't sure which primal source would be the best for Claudia, honestly. Maybe Callum could teach her sky magic. She was kind of like a storm in a way, after all.

"We've talked about it." Claudia replied. Back when she had originally started travelling with them to teach Callum magic, she remembered they talked about it a few times, though not really in a serious way, "But Callum is special. We don't even know if just any human could do it. "

"You could at least try." Rayla suggested, "You can't really use that here."

"You know, maybe I'll ask Callum about that later." Claudia smiled, though it was partially to avoid fighting with Rayla. But maybe she would, because it would be cool to be able to use primal magic, too. And they'd be less likely to get caught.

"In the meantime..." Claudia took Rayla's hand, and even if she was angry she didn't immediately take it away, "We should go find them."

A/N: ah, finally. we're getting somewhere.

that one claudia line is also pretty popular. they might even reference it later on.