"It's been tried. Many times, in many ways. It is suspected the price is part of divine agreements, and actively enforced against exploitation. Mind you, I intend to try a great many things again once I have the leeway to experiment. Perhaps divine agreements are different here, or some plentiful substitute exists. But I would not expect it to work, and there's no getting around the duration limit with the magic I have."

"Could I be holding the diamond the whole time -"

"As in, conjure it as part of your outfit? I suspect it wouldn't work — magically conjured objects cannot, as a rule, be used in spells, and I know of literally zero exceptions to this. Your clothes registered as magical. It is worth a try, but my more ambitious hope is that someone somewhere can create diamonds the way you create ice."

"I guess that's - not impossible -"

"One day, perhaps." 

"Yeah." Sigh.

Ipaxalon is less communicative during the latter half of the voyage. He's had the most urgent conversations already, and while he has quite a few castings of tongues, he is beginning to tap his higher-level spell slots for them and wants to conserve those. 

But his English is improving, and he practices with Rebecca and the sailors when he's not otherwise occupied. Tongues helped a lot with quickly expanding his vocabulary, though it's not great for retention and his grammar needs work. 

As fatigue sets in, he rests on clouds more frequently, and is noticeably slower to react. (Ipaxalon's Fortitude save can be succinctly described as "yes", but two weeks with minimal sleep is still rough.) 

"Do you want me to ask the captain if there's any way we could tow an iceberg?"

He eyes the ship doubtfully. Tongues isn't up at the moment. "Ice...berg...? Piece of ice behind ship? Clever. Worth a try." It wouldn't have to be a large iceberg. 

"I can make one if we can do it!" she tells him, and she flies down, but she's back up a minute later saying that the ship's not equipped for that, a whaler might be.

"Understand. Was a long shot. Whaler?" It's a new word. 

"A ship for hunting whales. Sometimes they've gotta let the whale tow them for a while to tire it out."

"I see," he says after processing for a moment.

"Other thing, I wonder, you range of detect monster sense?"

"Oh, it's not great, that's why I sometimes fly really low and circle the ship."

He doesn't have much to add, and makes small talk in rough-but-improving English for a while. 

With favorable winds nearly guaranteed, they do make good time. A couple days early, land is visible on the horizon.

They pull in to port. There is not a lot of space where a large dragon is welcome on the beach, they're loading and unloading stuff and people all the time, but he can find a rocky outcropping that will hold him.

He thanks the captain, and crew, and especially Rebecca, before deciding where to sleep. 

Sleeping in a strange city is a tad uncomfortable. But monsters do exist in the wilderness, he's been told, and they're probably a good deal more likely to sneak up on him than humans at the moment, given he looks like a benign magical creature. 

He might be out for a while, so he doesn't want to land on a cloud and drift away. He'll take the outcropping. 

Flop. Alarm, just to be safe. And sleep. 

Does the Alarm notice when, six hours later, a green doe with wings and flowers sprouting out of her in aesthetic spots approaches to curl up next to him companionably?

It does. He starts awake — not immediately in combat mode, alarm is known for being somewhat indiscriminate by default, but on guard. He may startle the creature. When he sees what woke him, and confirms there are in fact no humanoids with pointy objects nearby, he examines her curiously. "Do you speak?"

She blinks at him beatifically and rustles her petal-feathered wings.

What fascinating aesthetics this world has. She looks almost fae and smells like a mix of animal, human, and flower. It's hard to believe such a creature could be the result of an innocent person losing their soul (?) and becoming an empty shell. 

She doesn't detect as evil, and he lacks the material resources for a true seeing right now. Well, if this is the worst that happens when he's out for a few hours, he's probably fine, despite the lingering discomfort at being this close to a city and sleeping without a proper lair. He dismisses the alarm for now and goes back to sleep.  

He might wake up two hours later when the doe is delicately stomping to death all the individual black "bugs" in a new-spawned swarm with her hooves.

He does!!

He's heard about swarms during the voyage. He can't simply breathe on them all, that'd likely kill the doe. He can activate his cold aura and sweep at the edges of the swarm with his tail, freezing and crushing bugs and catching any that separate from the main cluster. "Please move back, area magic," he says, on the off chance she can understand. Otherwise they'll just do this the slow way.

They mostly don't separate from the main cluster much. When his tail gets involved she flutters clear, though.

Perfect. He rears, aims down, and exhales a cone-shaped blast that should flash-freeze the lot of them.