The aging wizard walked and listened, an annoying twitch in his foot as a small pang began to walk up and around his arch. He had probably stepped on a rock, and his shoes hadn’t done their job. As he listened to the ultra-powerful heroine, it struck him that these nuisance injuries hit him far more frequently, and that trend wasn’t likely to change course. If age had saddled him with physical idiosyncratic peccadillos, it had at least granted him the wisdom of knowing when to shut up. His hand rubbing the hot skin on the back of his neck, he managed a smile as he craned his head over towards the emerald-eyed magicians.

“It’s reasonable enough, we can roll Yanbo to Scara Brae. I agree we can’t exactly pop Attila into a dinghy, the poor bastard will fall out if the high winds hit us. I hadn’t factored in the bird as a scout.”

He caught the peculiar, curious phoenix peering at him, the red hooked beak angled toward the horizon as Taodoine appeared to listen. Storm wasn’t specifically certain what the damned thing even was, but the fiery flier had proven himself loyal and helpful on more than one occasion.

“It’s schedules I worry about. Charters that take names and log passengers, anything that sails into formal ports; can’t trust a damned one of them. They won’t let us on or off without accounting for our identifications, which could feed well into whomever set me up and is likely expecting me to get out of town. Taodoine is gifted, but if they know where we’re coming, he’ll never spot people waiting calmly inside the local pub with an eye on the shoreline.”

The gallop-clip of Attila’s steady hooves on hard packed earth continued to drone beside him, with the inquisitive prodigy listening intently. Attila and Taische presented two problems; the vile electromancer refused to put the girl at risk, and knew that the horse couldn’t swim for a shit.

“I think our move will be to hire one of those formal charters, and then bribe the captain to land us off-port. We certainly have plenty of options to drive such a coercion. Those boats sail all day port to port, and never veer off course. We have him pull a hundred feet from shore, and dump his precious cargo in shallow waters.

“...way I see it, if there are people waiting for us, they’ll have to come at me in the open, not bottlenecked on the boat. Good luck to the damned fools that try to take me alive at that point.”

It wasn’t perfect, but it would likely be good enough. The salt air made its presence known with a warm, briny odor that filled his nose. They’d made their way to the shoreline, and it wouldn’t be long from here to Yanbo.