Headtilt and feathers puffing up.

I cannot tell how that is working at all!!

She concludes the song. It's a different kind of magic from yours. The songs have to be composed in specific worlds with a particular kind of magic, but then we can use them anywhere. There are music schools, in those worlds, where they work on new ones.

How...

But this one has been so composed, and thus has power even far from its home?

Yes, that's right.

I do not understand how that is POSSIBLE. There must be a hidden order beneath the world that explains it. I am more ignorant even than I thought.

There's a lot to learn, and always more worlds to learn about. If you'd like to visit one of the music colleges to see if you can learn to compose magic songs while you have access to the underlying magic, you can do that.

It is certainly tempting. Yet it is a perilous thing to travel far from one's home.

Would your territory be in danger of usurpation?

Yes; I have trained Heralds from among the birds and pigs, but they are mere messengers. When my scent fades, challengers will come and trample my beautiful garden. Thus is the way of the dragons.

That seems very limiting, if you can't travel for long without losing your home.

It is not a certainty, but a risk. One that was worth taking to study under the wise one, one that may be worth taking again upon further consideration.

Could you take turns with a neighboring dragon you get along with, guarding each other's homes while the other is away?

She startles and growls.

...No. Territory is deep and personal. Our essences would mingle unnaturally, the land would grow confused. It would be a cycle, a new and weird one, not one of those long favored by Sun and Earth.

Hm. What if a non-dragon looked after it? You could hire someone, once you had collected enough nonshiny-abstractions-of-the-concept-of-the-ability-to-acquire-shiny-things, which I don't think would be hard for you, since dragons are rare and special and cool and lots of people would want to pay you to do things.

Perhaps. I am growing tired of conversation, visitor. Know that you may call upon the Warden of this garden again another day.

Thank you for speaking with me. And off she pops.

A surprisingly common theme in the stories told in the delegation's Goldvalley shops are stories of ghosts and visions on The Mountain. (It doesn't really have a name, being the only one worth the designation in the area.)

They say the ghosts charge living warriors with vengeance. That they will lead you to treasure if you follow them. That only death lies in following them. That they are signs of the dragons' past crimes, dead in the Great War. That they are not quite human, made by the star lords as diggers and crafters. That their buried kingdom still lies below, with a king's ransom in Delver Steel waiting for explorers. That their mindless rage is simply a delusion and a sad remnant.

Yeah they're going to send somebody in to check that out just in case.

Eventually that person will see flickers of movement that aren't actually there on the edge of their vision, and random sudden chill or heat, when near a specific area.

The Dwarf-fairy heads toward the affected area.

The flickers intensify but don't actually become clearer. Animals seem to avoid the place, a small flat near cliffs, maybe a few hundred feet across.

It looks like there may have been a road and hold entrance here, long long long ago. It wouldn't be a bad spot for one anyway.

"Hello," says the Dwarf-fairy.

Nothing changes.

He tromps around for a bit more, doing some amateur archaeology, checking to see if any other spots also show these effects.

A couple other places have weaker flickers. There's more signs of maybe-it-was-a-road-once, some maybe-something-really-destructive-happened-here, and an old ventilation shaft near the peak, rusted and collapsed.