Ssarradon in Sssight

Tia, Corin, and Balthan looked at each other, then at Vesh and Rika.

“Well,” Tia began, “it started with Balthan showing me mushrooms. And then magic trees. And then a living shadow swooped over the camp, and I threw sticks and stones, and then Kethra heroically defended us, and–”

“A wyrmling circled,” Corin cut in, voice thin but steady. “Bigger than Kethra, smaller than the legends. It attacked us. I… attempted a spell.”

“You rocked that spell,” Tia said, smacking his shoulder. “It went pew–” she mimed an explosion with both hands – “and lit the thing up like a lantern.”

Balthan just folded his arms. “I think it was just curious at the beginning. Could’ve gone badly if it decided to commit. We stayed under the trees. Then it left.”

“You’re not gonna mention your epic warcry??” Tia asked. “It was sooo cool! For a sec I was scared there was a big one too.”

A pause, almost an afterthought. Then Balthan continued, “And I found this.”

He reached into his pack and drew out the shard of amber sap in a jar. Its faint gold veins caught the firelight, and even Rika leaned in with a quiet “Whoa.”

Vesh meanwhile was just starting to comprehend. “So you guys are telling me, not only did you fight off a wyrm, but you also found an ancient sap?!”

Almost like a conspiratorial whisper Tia said, “Never knew Vesh could lose his cool like that.”

“And I thought we were the ones with incredible news,” Rika answered while Vesh was still struggling with reality. “And that ancient sap too… not even my former master had such a high quality conductor. Balthan is and remains our undisputed master collector.”

The fire’s loud crackle invited them closer.
By then, the pepperlings were ready – split and seared in the pan until their skins blistered and the air carried that warm, peppery aroma Balthan had promised. Vesh had added a handful of pale, bead-like grains from Wimshir, something between seed and kernel, that swelled soft and doughy in the pot. He stirred in a sauce rich with herbs, the faint tang of citrus, and a scattering of sharp green leaves.

When the bowls were passed around, the pepperlings’ aroma tangled with the steam from the grains – not spicy, but deep and inviting, the way the scent of a warm bakery pulls you in. Tia took a bite and immediately decided it was yet another favourite meal added to her list.

Tia slid down beside Kethra, who had curled up comfortably near the warmth, eyes half-lidded. Tia scratched the soft scales along her jawline, murmuring praise like she was the bravest and strongest of them all.
Kethra responded with a slow, pleased blink.

Vesh, seated on her other side, gave the Sska’veth an approving nod before turning his attention to Balthan. “So. Wimshir. They took the gold, and we’ve got fresh cloth in trade. Two extra tins of resin, too.
Rope so long we could bind Kethra on the other side of the mountains. Enough nails to craft a new cart and so many fresh jars for you. All shapes and sizes, most are air-tight.”

“With that amount I gave you?” Balthan asked with suspicion.

“Yeah, right? I did haggle the best I could, but I’m not sure what happened. The gold you gave me was invaluable to them. Seems like the collapsed mine really caused a shortage there,” Vesh assumed.

Rika occasionally chimed in with details about a stall or their trading tactics, but her eyes drifted to Corin, who was poking at a stick in the dirt. Every few moments he muttered under his breath and flicked his wand, producing little fizzles of light that barely reached the fire.

“You’ve been at that since we sat down,” she said at last.

He didn’t look up. “If I can just get it right again…”

Tia grinned at him. “You will. You already did once today, remember?”

Corin’s ears went pink, but he tried to hide it behind another flick of his wand.

The fire crackled, delicious bowls emptied, and the sky slowly faded to a deep, star-pierced blue. The wyrmling’s shadow was gone, but its echo lingered – an unspoken weight in the way they kept glancing upward, just in case.

The others lingered by the fire, voices dipping in and out of laughter. Tia let herself listen without really joining in, half-curled in her blanket at Kethra’s side. The lizard's slow breathing rose and fell under her hand.

It wasn’t as cold tonight. At first she thought it was just the fire, or the blanket, or maybe Kethra’s warmth seeping through the ground. But when a breeze brushed over her face, it carried a softness the highlands never had.

She closed her eyes, but the sound of their chatter still threaded through – Vesh describing some ridiculous haggling victory, Rika laughing, Corin insisting his spark had been intentional. It was almost… homelike.

And that thought made her chest ache. She hadn’t been thinking of home much lately, not with the days so full and strange. Not with them. But forgetting felt wrong. She could see her mom hugging her, her dad with a mug at the heart, her sister bent over her phone and pretending not to smile when Tia teased her.

When the embers were banked and the laughter thinned into murmurs, she drifted under the weight of both comfort and homesickness.

The air felt safer than it had a few hours ago – but every creak of the cart or sudden gust overhead still turned all their eyes upward.

The next days blurred into a steady, unhurried rhythm.
Hills softened into wide, rolling valleys. Heather gave way to tall, rustling grass, and then to patches of low forest where cicadas sang like the air itself was shimmering.

By the second day, the road itself began to change.

Road forks increased,and what had once been a thin, wind-scoured strip of dirt widened into a packed earthen track, firm underfoot and edged with wheel ruts so deep they could swallow a boot.

Before they noticed, several more cities plopped up under the horizon.

And what’s that? Other carts prowled the distant roads.

The wind lost its sharpness. By the third day, Rika’s hair, once frizzed by highland gusts, had begun to curl at the edges from the damp.
Kethra draped herself across sun-warmed rocks whenever they paused, eyes half-shut, tasting the air with a lazy flick of her tongue.

By the fourth night, Tia left her blanket folded at her feet. Corin had taken to walking with his wand out, flicking it at passing fence posts or tufts of grass, from time to time shooting out a small projectile.

A day later the ruts were cut into loose, pale cobbles, uneven but easy to walk, and by afternoon the stones had settled into a smoother, dark-set pattern, fitted tight enough to carry even the heaviest wagons without a shudder.

As the roads grew busier, Balthan asked Corin to hide his wand again.

Traffic thickened every few hours. Traders passed them in twos and threes, carts stacked with rolls of cloth or baskets of glossy fruit, pulled by beasts with long, trailing tails and muzzles hung with bright charms. Some riders called greetings, others just dipped their heads and urged their animals on. The air seemed richer with smells Tia didn’t have names for – sharp green herbs, roasted seeds, something like cinnamon if cinnamon had decided to go on holiday and relax a bit.

Others still went the opposite way, their carts mostly empty, wearing the chronic sly grin of a sale well made, the soft clink of metal following them down the road.

One merchant slowed to fall into step beside them, his own Sska’veth padding along next to Kethra. This one was smaller than her but sleeker, scales burnished bronze and eyes a pale amber. It hissed once, a short, soft sound, and Kethra answered with a slow blink and a half-turn of her head – an acknowledgement without commitment.
“Good manners, that one,” the merchant said with an approving smile, nodding at Kethra. “Yours?”
“Ours,” Balthan replied simply.
The man’s gaze flicked over the group, settling on Tia for a curious half-second before moving on. “Headed to Ssarradon?”
Vesh answered for them. “We are.”
“Then you’re in for a sight. City’s been swelling these last months – traders from three provinces over, festivals stacking on each other, the High Terrace almost never empty.” He grinned, as though the bustle was a private joke. “Good time to do business. Bad time to try crossing the market in less than an hour.”

Tia chuckled at the lizardman’s joke.

Before he went on his way, the merchant rummaged in a saddlebag and tossed something to Vesh – a twist of cloth holding small, round kernels the size of peppercorns. “Steep ’em in broth. You’ll see.” Then he clucked to his Sska’veth, and the two of them moved ahead, bronze scales flashing in the sunlight until they were just another shape in the slow-moving river of traffic.

Kethra flicked her tongue in their direction once, then returned her gaze to the road ahead, unbothered. Tia, on the other hand, couldn’t stop glancing from one new passerby to another. Every step felt like it carried them closer to somewhere bigger, louder, and far more alive than anywhere she’d been before.

It was late afternoon when they crested a ridge and saw it:
Ssarradon.

Down under the grand arch, framed by it, the city spilled down a slope in uneven steps, as if the earth itself had been carved into wide ledges and built upon in every direction. Pale stone walls caught the light, and here and there, sun-basking terraces gleamed like open palms toward the sky. In the heart of it all, a broader terrace jutted forward just next to sheer endless patches of vendor awnings.

“That,” Vesh said quietly, “is The Crown of Wyrmspine.”
He didn’t need to explain the name. Even from here, Tia could bet she saw lizardfolk stretched out in the sun like living ornaments, tails flicking lazily as they watched the world below.

And the end of the mountain range did – just like Vesh had promised – look like a colossal skull of stone.

The road wound downward, the sounds of the city faint but growing.
And somewhere above it all, the faintest cry of a young wyrm echoed off the cliffs, too distant to see, but close enough to remember.

Vesh guided Kethra off the road and onto a neat grassy spot.

“We camp here,” he said, gaze fixed on the view. “Ssarradon doesn’t sleep early. And she never sleeps in.”