Gill, on the other hand, took a little bit longer to get back. The three dragonriders were patiently waiting for him around a fire they had started. They watched the ship continue to descend. Alex was surprised the vrosks hadn’t gotten inside yet. She’d seen what vrosks could do up close, and it wasn’t pretty.
Jollies was already bored with waiting, and she’d only gotten back a few minutes ago. She paced up and down the length of a tree branch until finally jumping from the tree and landing on Alex’s shoulder. “Okay, if you aren’t going to give me any details now, the least you can do is tell me what you did,” she whined.
Alex wanted to flick Jollies off her shoulder and let the conversation end there, but she knew it was because she was getting anxious, waiting for Gill to get back. Sending members of her team out alone always made her uncomfortable. “Fine,” Alex relented. “We got into a fight with some giants and ended up running across a bunch of pixies living in the forest.”
“Figures you two would get into a fight on a date. And there are pixies out here in the forest? I had no idea. What were they like?”
“Actually, now that I think of it, they were different from you or any of the pixies in the Nest. Not nearly as high energy. They were still beautiful, though.”
“That’s because the pixies in the Nest, including me, aren’t woodland pixies. Most of us come from pixie cities. Things move faster there. Roy said it was like the difference between humans who grow up in the country or something called New York. Anyway, I’d like to meet them at some point. I haven’t spent a whole lot of time with woodlanders.”
“Is that a common thing? I mean, not knowing much about another branch of your own race?”
Jollies shrugged. “Depends on how you look at it. Most high elves don’t know much about drow other than what they’ve read. I’ve heard it’s the same for you humans. You don’t know much about humans in other countries. Isn’t that the basis for most of your wars?”
Alex couldn’t disagree with her. “One of our leaders, a long time ago, said the only way humans would stop fighting each other was if we had to work together to fight something bigger than us.”
Jollies laughed as Alex chuckled ironically. “That’s a sad thought,” the pixie whispered. “But I think you could say that about any of the races throughout the realms. Even the elves, regardless of what they’d have you think. Gnomes are the only race that has had an extended peace.”
Alex found that hard to believe. “Really? Brath seems so angry, and so do all the other gnomes.”
“That’s just because gnomes are prickly. They haven’t had a war in hundreds of years. That’s why their homeworld fell so quickly. They had the weakest army of anyone attacked.”
Alex let that irony sink in as she leaned forward and stared into the flames. She could see Jim’s face through the fire, also pondering what Jollies had just said. He’d been quiet since the recalibrations on his mech had been finished—deep in thought, his eyes distant.
Behind Jim, Alex saw Gill’s dragon land. The rider walked up to the flames and took a seat next to Jim, who patted him on the shoulder. “Glad you made it back,” Jim said. “These two were trying their best to depress the living hell out of me.”
Jollies stuck her tongue out at him. “I was not trying to depress you. We were just talking about the war.”
Gill nodded as he scooted closer to the fire. “A good conversation for light hearts. It is something we should talk about. It makes no sense to fight a war we don’t understand, even if it concerns us. Otherwise, we aren’t much better than the Dark One’s tools.”
“Do drow have wars?” Alex asked.
Gill took his time answering, as he did anytime he was questioned about drow culture. At first, Alex had thought it was because he didn’t want to talk to outsiders about his people. Over time, Alex had determined that it was more about trying not to misrepresent his people. “We drow haven’t fought a war for some time. Maybe a few thousand years.”
“How do you settle differences, then?”
“Most drow aggression is done through subterfuge. Behind the scenes kind of stuff. The drow are technically at peace with everyone but really at peace with no one. It’s one of the reasons people don’t trust us. When your entire race is known for being sneaky, it’s hard to get people to see anything other than that.”
The four dragonriders sat in silence, watching the flames and thinking over what had been said. Then Alex pulled up her tactical display and announced, “We better start planning. Come on.”
Chapter Eight
Alex discovered within minutes that she hated planning anything more than a few steps ahead, but she wanted to get better at it. Obviously, trusting her gut was only going to keep her out of trouble for so long. Planning ahead seemed like the best way to stay alive.
It also helped that she wasn’t going at it by herself. The tactical display allowed everyone to see what was going on and chip in. That was great because both Gill and Jollies had excellent insights into some of the proposed ideas.
The four dragonriders sketched out an idea of how long it was going to take the ship to actually touch down. While they were charting the potential crash site of the ship, Alex received a comm from Myrddin. He told her he’d arrived back at Middang3ard and was in the process of pulling together whatever reinforcements he could. Obviously, his call for reinforcements held much more
