Sorry for any major character inconsistencies, but some were intentional due to the first 'surfacing' of the dragon 'inside', however, some are just due to how long this chapter took me too long and I slightly lost touch with their proper characters.
I will try to work towards fixing that, but since I'm already late and at most I will slightly change the wording and nothing major, here you go.
Enjoy!
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With a one last look at the Friþstōw, I dove into the gate and after shimmying through the thin gap in the storm wall, I headed north. The goal was to reach the Underpass before Astrid wakes up. 'She found this place once, but the less she knows the better for everyone.'
The Underpass is, more or less, a bunch of jagged and weirdly shaped rocks sticking out of the sea. Their unique location and structure makes them act like a sponge for all the mist rolling off of the Storm Wall. This makes the Underpass a very perilous region, even for the dragons.
From what I learned in the time I spent with Gylfi, there are no proper islands to rest on, the rocks are very hard and sharp, and the fog limits the visibility to no more than twenty meters. Well, he obviously didn't use meters as a unit. I think he said minors? As in, a diminutive from minoriens. Which are literally just a one thousandth of an orion.
Oh right, I almost forgot the most important part. It's called the Underpass, because it's the ONLY way for most non-water dragons to cross between Western and Eastern halves of this... Well, my geological knowledge tempts me to call it a sunken continent.
But I digress. The goal is to get there before Astrid wakes up, because then it will be a lot harder for her to know where west from Berg, ᚦᚢᚾᚪᚱ᛫ᚠᚱᛁᚦᛥᚣᚹ (Þunor Friþstōw) is. They entered the Wall from northeast, which means that they either flew from Feycrags that are in this exact direction or they flew west from what vikings call Scauldron Island and got lost over the empty seas that lay between it and the Skrill Sanctuary, or ᚦᚢᚾᚪᚱ᛫ᚠᚱᛁᚦᛥᚣᚹ (Þunor Friþstōw) in proper draconic.
Ugh, I can already feel the boredom and I just took off.
>Almost two hours later...<
"Yes! Finally!" I've been circling around those stupid diorite superveins or whatever the hell those are. There is just nowhere to land and Astrid has been stirring for a few minutes now.
I could have been here in under half an hour with my max cruising speed of 100 oriens, but there is no way Astrid can take that kind of speed and without any armor at that.
Fortunately, after ten or so minutes, I managed to find a large enough, flat piece of rock to land on with Astrid.
She was already almost awake and the additional nudge when I placed her on the damp and cold rock was just enough to jolt her up to full attention.
"På Hel, who-?! Wha-!!!" Maybe that was too fast since she almost fell into the water.
"Oh Zoya, thanks for the save. Why do I feel like I got hit with a log on my head? Oh yeah, and where are we?" Since we established that the first part is Devyn's fault, I can just ignore that question, but for the second...
It's not that the question is hard, but... I have nowhere to write on. It's possible to carve it in the stone with my claws, however the sound is way to painful to my ears. "..."
"Zoya? What's the matter? ... Did you do something,... again?" Asked Astrid, her curiosity shifting into suspicion with every question.
No, that was Dewyn's fault! I did no such thing and what do you mean with that pause! And that's not what I was thinking about, stupid Astrid. I carried you all the way here and offer to take you to Berg and all I get is a label of a troublemaker. *Humf!*
"See? I knew you did something, spill it." Astrid doubled down on her theory, which did make me reconsider knocking her out again, but I quickly got rid of those useless thoughts, and with gritted teeth, started to carve. *Skriiieeee!!*
Not my wisest decision. "Zoya, on Odin's mercy, stop that!" I have it at least twice as bad, so don't you complain now. I also only now noticed, but this is worse than when I first tried writing or drawing in the dragon body. For context, the sound was terrible, but my claws cut into the rock with not that much difficulty, so I'm just not sure where did this wobble come from.
"What was tha-?!" Before she had much time to even finish her sentence, I caught Astrid's chin with the tip of my tail and made her face what I wrote. 'Underpass.'
Like always when shaken out of her chain of thought, she took a moment to recalibrate and asked with a now perfectly calm tone. "What's the Underpass?"
... Of course she would ask. I just gave her the best deadpan expression I can muster, but it wasn't quite as effective with the dragon-human body language barrier. Oh, she got there, alright, just... took her time... and then some to figure out what I meant by that.
>Half an hour later...<
After Astrid finally realized what I meant, and to her credit, it wasn't that long, we departed for the Feycrags, but Astrid had yet to learn that name. Makes me wonder if she or others visited them already. If not then we will both have a surprise.
I'm very curious about Feycrags, because when Gylfi was teaching me about local geography and it turns out that the famous Feycrags are a touristic Earth equivalent of Greek and Italian islands, but for dragons.
That was the main reason I insisted on flying over Feycrags and then over the empty seas west of Berg and not - over empty seas east of ᚦᚢᚾᚪᚱ᛫ᚠᚱᛁᚦᛥᚣᚹ (Þunor Friþstōw) and then past Scauldron Island.
I could have flown over New Berg, but it is still empty from what I understand and it would have been 100 oriens farther. It will already take me over a day to get to Berg, if I don't want to overwhelm Astrid with my speed... and I can't wait to get to Berg.
We will have to spend a night at one of the islands in the Feycrag region, since I don't have enough stamina yet to get us all the way to Berg in one go. Even more so since I will have to constantly control my speed. Like walking slower on a hiking trip to match the slowest member. You get tired faster from constantly adjusting your pace.
Something I forgot to mention is that, because of the moisture in the air, even at my current speed, Astrid has been basically laying flat on top of me, so that she will not gather all that water on herself. From what she said, I think it might be just slightly better than skiing in a snowstorm. I've never experienced either of the two, but I heard from people on the Internet that the latter can hurt like hell at high speeds.
Regardless, about a minute ago, I noticed that the fog is getting thinner, which means that we are at the edge of the Underpass and we should be out in a moment-...
Just when I thought that, the fog parted like a waterfall torn asunder and I was greeted with a calm turquoise sea, evidently quite shallow, and a bright late afternoon sky full of small cumulus clouds.
In the distance, I could already sea many of the islands comprising the Feycrag region. Lush backwoods creeping from behind light gray cliffs. I can be wrong, but the height and the near perfect 90 degree angle makes them look like someone forgot about geology and causality. How? I don't know, but at least they look amazing.
"Wow. Where are we? We spent the past half a year exploring islands around Berg, but I've never seen anything like it." One, you don't know draconic. Second, your eyes are shining. Oh, and I feel the same,... if we exclude the ridiculous part.