Elfborn: The Quest

A First Glimpse

Kira frowned as the Dolphin came around slowly around a final spur of rocky land, toiling under only half sail. That, however, wasn't something that could have been avoided, much to Kira's and the other Elfborn's' chagrin. For the Dolphin's main mast had been shattered in the final throes of the midnight storm that had nearly sunk the wide-beamed craft the night before, forcing the captain to make due with his remaining mast. If they had all their sail unfurled, they would have been in Romis early this morning.

But, as it were, it was closing in on mid afternoon and the Golden Harbor of the ancient city was still around the next corner. Or so the captain kept on telling them.

"Figures we would lose the main mast, with our luck," Jase grumbled from his place beside her, both leaning against the Dolphin's midships railing to peer glumly at the rocky shore a hundred metres away. "Although I thought we should've sank at least twenty times out on the open sea."

"Is this the flavor of the day, Jase?" the slender young woman said in reply, looking over at her comrade as her frown deepened. "An irritating pessimism that should have gone overboard with the mast last night?"

Jase snorted without looking up at her.

"Don't bother trying to brow beat me, like you do Gillian, Kira. I'm not so easily cowed," he said flatly, not stirring from his spot on the rail. "You know as well as I do that not much has gone right for us ever since we let the Dark Companions take us in Hybernia. The mast going last night was just the latest stroke of bad luck going against us." He glanced up at the sky which, as it had for the last two months, was low and threatening.

"And, if things are consistent, it'll start raining any second now."

"Pfah!" Kira turned away from the gloomy young man, returning to her own spot on the rail. "You've just been cooped up on board too long, that's all."

"I'd say, burn me for lying," Jase grunted. "Caught between Eje's attempts at piousness, your thumping about, looking for somebody to belittle, Heather's moaning about needing something to do, Gillian's constant whining and Brice looking down his nose at us through the glasses of his every time something requiring an answer or two comes up, I've just about had it!" He let a long sigh whistle out between his teeth.

"Either I'm going to throw one of you overboard or jump myself! And take my chances on the rocks out there."

Sighing herself, Kira looked glumly at the rocks passing them by to the right. As much as she hated to admit it, her sentiments pretty much mirrored Jase's. It had been a long, long voyage and, combined with the close quarters they had been forced to live in, it hadn't taken long for their various idiosyncrasies to quickly become apparent. And for those quirks to just as quickly become irritating.

Sighing again, Kira let her eyes slowly rise from the foaming water sweeping past as the Dolphin slowly pushed forward to take in the rocky knoll that was just going by, revealing what lay beyond. And she felt her eyes widen in amazement as what she saw beyond the rocky spur.

"By all that's holy!" she gasped and Jase's head jerked up.

"What? Did you say something, Kira?" he asked and frowned as he found the slender young woman staring off into the distance. Quickly he turned his head to follow her gaze. And immediately pushed off the rail to gasp himself in astonishment.

It was straight out of the stuff of legends. As the Dolphin came around the spur, it found itself slowly moving by the massive outer marker, known as the Dragon's Perch. The Perch was a tower of chiseled granite, obsidian and marble that had been hammered into the floor of the Remis Basin, the bay that became the Golden Harbor, still the most magnificent man-made harbor in the known world.