Travel takes many forms, but the engine that powers it is kindness.

The first stretch of your journey is done by foot, but only so much as is needed to take you to the nearest road. There almost immediately a truck laden with hay bales pulls to a halt and offers you a ride and so each of you clamber upon the back and the roof and set out together for as long as your paths align. Music pours from the radio - an eclectic mix channel put together by Princess Kikil's mother who talks animatedly about how she cracked the various unique encryptions that protected each song. You get a bit of everything - jazz, classical, memebeat, and three different versions of "Writing's On The Wall". 

The roads are kindnesses too. Sometimes they weave like fishnets, filtering the landscape to catch the most beautiful pieces of scenery to fill the visions of travellers. Sometimes they resolve into laser-sharp arrows that cut through mountains and rivers without care. Both exist in parallel, providing choices for travelers who want to dwell in the moment and those who just want to get back home. Some paths are new, wide, and so well maintained it feels like they are signs of the mandate of heaven. Some are old and dusty, so faded into the landscape that they feel like natural formations. Hyra cannot resist putting her head out the window for some instincts run too deep and Cyanis strikes a bargain with the farmer to purchase a comfortable wool jumper five sizes too large for her in exchange for an entirely legitimate story about buried fox treasure. It comes down to her knees; she wears it proudly and inside-out along with a blue baseball cap with holes cut for her ears.

Your paths diverge just before a river; the farmer isn't going any further so she sends you on your way with a bag full of delicious cherry tomatoes that you eat like grapes as you walk. A while further you encounter a riverside shack where the old man invites you onto his fishing boat at least until the next town. You spend the night sleeping beneath the stars and listening to the hum of the engine and the lapping of water and watching the wingfish dart around above you snatching mosquitoes out of the sky. 

Your departure from the boat is delayed for several minutes in the morning by a very large frog who has puffed himself up even larger while Cyanis and the fisherman tried to remember if its particular type was poisonous. In the end the matter is rendered moot when Yue was able to convince it that the sun will be coming up soon and this very comfortable concrete dock will be rendered hot and uninhabitable, meaning it was best served by getting a head start on a good muddy spot. This was well timed for it came right as Cyanis had convinced the fisherman to give the frog a poke for science, and so the mystery of the frog's poison would be left for another fox to unravel.

There are no vehicles leaving town this early, so again it was walking. Fresh and crisp and early along a long winding bike path through the rolling hills as the trees steam in the dawn-light as dew evaporates. You stop to pray at a shrine and the maiden there almost gives you some cold tofu skewers before she spots Cyanis and then it's Rose to the defense as suddenly you are beset (very unfairly, Cyanis might add). In the end, Rose from the River is able to demonstrate her superiority in skill with the blade and superiority of rank within the Order and Cyanis has her punishment for sneaking into temple grounds downgraded to having some beans ritually tossed at her. She bemoans this injustice all the way to the top of the hill.

And there you find horses. A dozen of them, wild and tame at once. They trot and snort and then come close and snuffle for carrots and are so convincing about it they send Chin wind-wafting back down the hill to purchase some from the temple. Once fed the horses become so docile and loving they can be mounted and there they carry you further across the land as the horizon glows with the eternally shy dawn. 

And then the sky blacks out.

Something massive soars overhead - round and black and jagged with yellow. It takes a moment to process it - a balloon! A hot air balloon! It is joined by another, and another! And then a dozen! And then a [i]hundred[/i]! Beyond this hill soar balloons in a huge flock, each a unique construction - hand made of individualized heraldric cloth. Skulls and crossbones, pink and rainbows, blue and white checkers, red chevrons, brass and violet, crudely stitched dinosaurs, each floating low in the sky like a painted egg. You hear voices, laughter - and then a hard and glittering rain falls upon you. Some of the people in the balloons have thrown things from the sides down to you - individually wrapped chocolate eggs the size of a thumbnail, each foil wrapping making them shine like rubies and sapphires in the grass.

And then the final shape launches from the balloon field. Though it takes to the air it has the character of water, though its scales flash in dawn reflection they're so bright they must be glowing. It moves like nothing could, nothing should - not faster than the boxy paper and wood biplanes that it races on the straight, but with folding wings making turns that would render a human dizzy or unconscious. For a few moments it and the planes weave about through the balloons and - oh, are they trailing some sort of wire? This cable wraps through the sky, weaving around the long metal rods that descend from the base of each of the balloons.

And then the dragon breathes, and her breath is lightning.

The sky lights up in a single mighty thunderstrike, a lightning bolt in the shape of tangled thread. It surges into every balloon and runs up their sides in azure columns. It hangs there for a long moments, ten full seconds, before the dragon's breath finally ceases.

And then gears and machinery begin to turn. Fires alight beneath the balloons, providing lift - and all at once the air fleet rises up into the sky. The dragon flies again - she and her planes buffeting the balloons with great blasts of wind to correct courses and ensure that they are all flying together towards the distant mist-shrouded wonder of the Sky Castle.

Upon the field where the balloons had been a market is beginning to wind down. People from miles around had come to trade and celebrate with the citizens of the Sky Castle and there had been a great festival last night for them. Children have gotten up early in order to play with exciting new kites and drones and hunt for chocolate dropped from the sky, and what goods remain for sale are on final clearance discounts.