The following morning Drachia let herself out of Max's estate just as the sky was growing light over the eastern forests. After reviewing the now-crumpled missive written by Sebastian, she set off over the city of Greenpool on her own two wings. The creeping debaucherers and ambitious business-men stalking the streets early, or later, wherever their perspectives lay, glanced up to see the reddish shape scything through the air.

Not only was there a great amount of freedom in flying, but it was a faster method of travel than anything else in her arsenal of resources, except for Teleportation, of course. But she couldn't 'Port to anyplace she had never been before, and such conjurations could be risky under even the best of circumstances. 

So with golden membranes stretched taught and reptilian eyes scouring the nearly unbroken evergreen forests rolling below her, she tacked and bent her course towards the mountains. The snow-capped peaks were much higher than the mist-spouting calderas she was used to, and she hoped with an instinctive shudder that she did not have to endure those frosty heights at all during her trip. 

As the hours swept by with the consistent whooshing of wind in her ear-frills, she began to see signs that she was getting close. From her dragons' eye view she sailed effortlessly over the tumbledown ruins of a farmhouse here, a cluster of homes from a tiny hamlet there all overgrown and drifted over by mossy earth, the shattered bottom half of a watch-tower on the jutting precipice of a cliff. The mountainsides rose up to meet her and as she sailed over a bare-rocked rise, she spotted her destination on the other side. 

The gray-granite castle was difficult to distinguish from the surrounding crags, but even at a distance Drachia's vision was supreme. As she swooped closer and made a wide circle around the ruins, she could see where the avalanches of lifetimes ago had washed not only the winding road that had lead to the castle's main gate but also most of the west wing and part of even the inner keep. The walls and battlements that remained were largely crusted with moss and ivy with only dark slots where the windows had once likely contained the beautiful stained glass humans were so fond of.

Banking around, she spotted a cluster of seven horses milling about, eating the winter rye grass sprouting through the flagstone of the castle's inner bailey.

"Axun-ra!" the magus hissed her triumph in draconic. Tucking her wings, she twisted into a dive and dropped lightly through a gaping hole in the roof of the castle's main hall, snapping her wings open to land with a soft thud on the mouldering remains of a blue carpet. 

Her snouted face twisted back and forth to take in her surroundings, but before she could step out of the shaft of sunlight she heard the tell-tale click-Thump! of a crossbow being fired. She threw up a clawed hand and dodged to the side, trailing a crackling arc of fire after her palm. The incoming bolt deflected to the side a mere inch from striking her scales, and thudded into the decaying mortar of one wall with a quiet hum.

Loudly, both out of surprise and to prevent another shot being fired she called into the dusty shadows of the ancient castle, "Tarvick, is that any way to treat your friends?"

She couldn't help but smirk when the nasally voice of her hook-nosed competitor came wheedling from a balcony above.

"Gods-damned dragon bitch, how do you get here so fast?"