Hmm.

What if ... he uses the fire ... to cook the dragon. 

He'll have to skin it first, on account of it is a red dragon, but dragons contain meat, sure. 

Amazing. Perfect. Totally doing it. 

This dragon was a lazy juvenile living off of tribute from the pirates, so it's fat and delicious. A very weird sort of delicious, though, rather unlike the taste of other edible animals. It's almost akin to some unholy combination of the ordinary taste of a cow and that sharp arcane buzz you get in your throat if you say too many magic words too fast in succession. 

This is the best day ever and Ashoc is now covered in grease and soot and grinning like a toddler who's just learned what chocolate is. 

The concept of eating dragon meat seems kind of weird and horrible to the ex-prisoner (what if it burns your stomach or something??) but she's happy to drink tea and eat bread and cheese and ration jerky. 

"So," says Laila once it doesn't seem like the poor girl is going to collapse any second, "you're not by chance the Mayor's missing daughter, are you?" 

Embarrassed giggle. "Um, yeah, I uh, I made some bad choices maybe, but I guess it's okay now - he's not too worried is he?" 

"He was actually quite worried! We were just supposed to be here to prevent the watches signalling for help when they saw the fleet and they were expecting to need to send soldiers to look for you less underground but then it turned out you were here."  

"Speaking of which, once everyone is prepared to move quickly we need to make our way back to the surface and notify the fleet that we've found you." 

First you steal the dragon's treasure, though, right? Jay is only like 20% sure what is going on all the way over there but he got the general impression of like, scales and fire and doom, and dragons are supposed to have shiny things. He is pretty sure. 

On inspection the dragon does not have very much treasure but it totally does have a small pile of coins, and some possibly valuable rocks, and a ring. 

Cool! Laila will pick up a handful of coins and the ring and suggest that perhaps Serra and her larger backpack could gather the rest for later counting and identification and division. 

Seems valid. 

Hey look, a hallway on the other side of this room that goes up! 

Upstairs, they will find that this cave is connected directly to the central fortress. 

It is weirdly empty, and outside the windows can be heard the sounds of both fighting and screaming. 

Laila would like to know what the heck, please. 

Oh! Oh! Jay knows this one! He has totally been hanging around supervising and not being lazy at all. 

The ships made landfall and there was a super interesting magic thing where the ships are enchanted to auto-repair themselves from the damage they take from encountering land, which maybe Laila might want to investigate later, and then they spat a bunch of people onto the shore, and then there was a whole bunch of fighting, and the navy people are having a very hard time getting the civilian pirate people to cooperate with an orderly surrender, partly because they are pretty uncooperative and partly because they're not terribly clear on the concept of "orderly." A whole lot of people have gotten a whole lot of stabbed, he is pretty sure. This may still be happening, there are a lot of people on this island and most of them seem to have weapons. 

Long-distance communication with one's familiar is not actually telepathy until she is a much, much cooler wizard, so from this Laila is able to derive approximately the general impression that the building she is in is probably empty because the people that were recently in it are busy trying to stab soldiers, but the situation is not at this time an especially impending disaster. And also something about the ships? She'll ask Jay later. 

She suggests that perhaps they might try to sneak the mayor's daughter back onto the ships before involving themselves in any of....... vague gesture at the window... that. 

"While I am hesitant to leave you alone, I ... suspect I would be more of a hindrance to a significant sneaking operation than a help?" 

"Nonsense! You can be very helpful to a sneaking operation, by being a big, red distraction." 

She can do big and red and distracting. 

The sudden appearance of an absolutely-nobody-present-is-capable-of-distinguishing-that-from-a-pit-fiend indeed produces a total absence of anyone having the spare attention to notice Laila and Ashoc sneaking by with the mayor's daughter. 

Laila shoos away the soldiers attempting to help her up the ladder from the beach to the temporarily grounded flagship, helps up her rescuee and hands her off to some servants with a pat on the shoulder, and wheels on the commodore. "Hello, yes, hi, what the fuck," she says, with a gesture at the massive battle scene. 

(Jay follows the mayor's daughter, partly because he feels like she shouldn't be abandoned quite yet and partly because she is still wearing Laila's cloak.) 

"Is something the matter?"