“You’re calling us what?” Jack gave the jabbering ridgeback beside him the driest look he could muster.
“Gemborn,” Luce prattled on, unperturbed by the skydancer’s look, “y’know, ‘cus we’re tasked with finding these tribal gems or whatnot to bring peace to the tribes and be heroes.”
“Right.” Jack quickened his pace to match Luce’s. “I thought you were just being in bad taste.” To accompany his words, Jack gestured with a wing to the opaline fractures cutting through his scales.
A shadow fell over Jack as Luce turned his head to gaze at the skydancer. “Nah, dude.” He shifted his attention to the bluish guardian striding beside him. “Hey, Sasha, d’ya think the Gemborn is a good name for us?”
Sanya huffed softly, “the Gemborn. Sure, why not?” The assuring words from Luce’s mate made his mouth twist into a wide grin.
“I think you idiots should just shut up. You’re probably attracting every beast from here to the Pillar with all this talking.” Ewena’s sharp tone cut through the windy air; almost instantly, her companions’ mouths snapped shut, and they continued to plod along in relative silence.
The scenery around them, which had been for miles only dusty stone with the occasional scraggly shrub, heightened into distant mountains with sparse greenery betwixt the mountain vales. Hours passed, and the mountains loomed higher into the cloudless sky; with it, the afternoon sun hide behind the gray peaks, washing the four dragons in evening shadows.
Eventually, Ewena called for a halt. Luce flopped onto the ground, groaning and complaining audibly about sore muscles. Sanya curled up beside him, their head laid across the back of Luce’s neck. Jack sat atop a nearby rock and pulled his journal and quill from his satchel while Ewena set about starting a fire.
Day One: Surprise, surprise - Luce has given our ragged band a dumb ass name. He insists on calling us the Gemborn. We don’t even have the gems yet and we certainly weren’t born of them.
Ewena kept us traveling even past a good part of the evening. The mountains are impossible to miss now - we’re resting in one of their shadows. She says tomorrow we’ll aim for one of the vales. It’s supposed to be a passageway of sorts to bypass climbing over the mountains, but she hasn’t been in their for years; who knows what kind of horrible things have taken up residence there.
