Maragosa shrugs, such as one can when one is flying anyway. "The landscape doesn't really lend itself to pleasant conversation."

"I suppose not." There's a stirring of dark wings in the sky to the west. "Speaking of which, it appears we have company."

She has no idea who that is. "Were you expecting anyone?"

"Hoping to avoid it, rather. That appears to be one of the blacks who call this region home."

"If we've seen them, they've probably seen us," she says nervously.

"Yes. Thus far it is only the one, so it may be they merely wish to talk, and remind us of their claim on the area. We'll land on the hill there." Arcanagos banks and angles downwards.

Maragosa follows, planning to let Arcanagos do the talking.

Arcanagos lands and shifts to his elf form. "Best to change," he murmurs. "Let us not start with hostility."

As the distant figure gets closer, it reveals itself to indeed be a black dragon, slightly smaller than Arcanagos with scales glittering like flecks of obsidian. The dragon circles overhead twice before landing.

Maragosa changes as well, and attempts to smile as she watches the black dragon circle in in silence.

The dragon lands and shifts into the form of a tall human woman with dark hair and a severe expression.

"A young drake and a hoary old wyrm," she says. "You should be old enough to know better, Blue. What is your business in these lands?"

     "We are simply passing through, on our way to the south. I am Arcanagos, and this is Maragosa. Might we know your name?"

"You might." She sweeps her gaze across the two. One feels her eyes could as well be smoldering coals for the way her gaze seems as though it ought to burn.

Maragosa looks back at her neutrally, wondering if there's any context they could have met in that wouldn't have made them so suspicious of each other.

"For what purpose," she asks, "do you travel south?"

     "We go to visit Karazhan, and the mortal Guardian. Nothing that will trouble the Black Flight," Arcanagos replies.

Her lips curl in a sneer. "You follow the path of a fool, and as all fools, labor in vain. Know this, then. You have skirted the dark mountain and so I am instructed that you may continue, but should you survive to return this way, I will kill you both."

Maragosa has so many questions and is much too nervous to ask any of them!

She waits a bare moment longer, then shifts form and launches herself into the sky and flies off.

"...Well," Arcanagos says. "That was bracing."

"So was that just about territory, or was it about our reason for being here?"

"Mostly the territory, I think. They must have plans for the volcano. I doubt that bodes well."

"It probably doesn't, no. What happens now, do we get back on the move or wait a while?"

"Let's move on. Best not to tempt fate, or irritable dragons."

"If you think she's solidly gone, definitely let's get moving." She turns back and gets ready to take off.

Off they go. They're not too much longer in the wasteland, the southern Redridge Mountains fast approach. On the far side is a green and wholesome land, with dense forests studded periodically by idyllic farmsteads. Small villages are interspersed at intervals that are more or less a half-day's walk on the ground. All in all, a lovely place to live for a mortal. This must be why the Stormwind humans don't much care for other people's problems.

Maragosa thinks she would probably still want to poke her nose into other people's problems if she were human, but it's much easier to get anything done as a dragon. She glides along and enjoys the lovely scenery.

The tower of Karazhan is located in a region called Deadwind Pass, a series of jagged cuts through the mountain range that begins in the southern jungles and walls off the shires of the Stormwind humans from the swampy eastern coast of the continent. The region is well named, as even the hardy scrub growing up the foothills turns brown and withered as they get closer, as though all the life has been sucked from it, and a fierce current of air springs up to contest their approaching flight.

This is more effort than she usually has to put into flying. For a while she just focuses on finding the best way to work with or around the wind.