The journey across the Waste via sand skate was much smoother than the previous legs of their expedition. Which may have not been saying much, considering how poorly the rest had gone. Still, they managed to maintain forward momentum… even if it was hot enough Illyxa wasn’t sure tossing around fireballs would have worsened things any. There was also enough sand to drive Illyxa up the wall again, while the humidity wavered from ferociously dry to unnaturally muggy. 

The joys of a magical desert.

There was also the joy of having to ration their food, only a small number of general stores to be encountered from time to time. General stores that Illyxa suspected were either a front for criminal organisations or were straight up criminal, based on the prices. 

At least they did all get a good bit of amusement when Hyi tried to move forward with her flirting with their skate pilot (who they had learned was named Lorgan). The Gorcish gentleman stared at her flatly as he continued to pilot the skate.

“Pardon?” he asked.

“When we get to the destination. I thought it might be nice to spend a bit of time together,” she explained.

“That does sound nice. I could introduce you blokes and sheilas to my boyfriend. He owns the best restaurant in the town,” Lorgan replied.

“Boy... boyfriend,” Hyi mumbled, a gobsmacked expression on her face.

“Yes... well, we’ve been talking about tyin’ the knot, but not just yet,” Lorgan said.

Gragya slipped in to sit on his other side, slapping the smaller Gorc on the shoulder, while grinning from ear to ear. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend? What’s he like?”

“He’s an Orc. Tall, muscular… and an amazing chef,” Lorgan replied.

“Good onya! Like the big blokes, eh?” Gragya asked.

Illyxa began to ignore the conversation at that point. There was likely to be conversations about matters she did not care about. Instead she used Hyi’s discombobulation to slip in and start talking magic with her. There were still secrets about the Order of the Nameless Grandmother that she still didn’t know. And, of course, wanted to know. After all, she had the magic reserves of a once in a millenia mage (according to her), and she wanted to have a knowledge to match.

Her carefully worded questions only got her so much information about the mysteries of the infinity singularity of the Nameless before Hyi realised what Illyxa was probing after.

Still, she managed to find out a little bit about the ideas about the secrets known about the primal chaos from which all was born. Even if it didn’t really make much sense (and was so wrapped in advanced magical theory that readers would be quite lost if the specifics were shared).

Illyxa still didn’t understand how someone could be infinite and yet finite at the same time. Or what sort of a deity could be the source of everything. Even if the Grandmother had apparently died birthing the universe itself.

---

At last they reached it: an end to the sands. It was a very sudden end, a wall of trees and shrubs running along the far end of a small meandering stream. The magic that had formed the Waste was like that, trickling off in some places and dropping away quickly in others. 

Running parallel  to the river for about a league, a town came into view. The architecture had a mixture of Orcish and Goblin elements, buildings of varying sizes dotting the small but well to do settlement. Lorgan pulled them up to a boardwalk that stretched into the sands where the skate could swim. A swarm of Goblin port workers hurried down the sand-pier, ready to help tie up and feed the skate, as well as unload any cargo. 

Hyi and Fuan reacted predictably to a swarm of Goblins, while Pin was understandably somewhat intimidated. Illyxa was simply thrilled to be above the average height of the new expanded group.

After negotiating docking fees, Lorgan then led the group into town. He was still full of enthusiasm about introducing everyone to his boyfriend and said boyfriend’s restaurant. Gragya and Illyxa both hoped they might get some sort of a discount for being there with Lorgan. Even if they’re already gotten a good price on the skate trip... it was always nice to save money.

Arriving at the small restaurant, they were surprised to find it rather crowded, a number of Halflets and canine Kobolds were filling the establishment, outnumbering a few Orc and Goblin diners. The air was filled with tense discussions, though it was all hushed enough that Illyxa couldn’t pick up on the specifics. She didn’t really care to, though, being distracted by the happy welcome from an impressively large Orcish chef (and the promise of proper food). The mountain of a man pulled Lorgan into a hug, and then everyone else, getting squeaks from Hyi, Pin, and Illyxa due to the force of his squeezes. 

“I’ve heard the whole drum a’ good things about you, Miss Gragya,” the large chef said, flashing an amicable smile. “Lorgan’s still right thrilled that a Gorc managed to win in the coliseums... though, seein’ you, darl, you’re nearly orc sized.”

“I have been told as much,” Gragya replied, happy to flex to show off. 

After a bit more gabbing about wrestling, muscles, and workouts (things Illyxa didn’t really pay attention to), Lorgan’s boyfriend led them to a booth, promising an excellent lunch for cheap. As a thank you for giving his boyfriend an excuse to visit again so soon. Illyxa was happy to hear that, at least.

Especially when the meal arrived, being dominated by an impressive mountain of meat. Gragya dug in with the fiercest enthusiasm (always going on about her need for meat to build muscles), but there was still plenty for the rest of them. They were a good chunk through the meal when a middle aged Halflet with an impressive moustache approached their booth.

“Excuse me, but... am I right in thinking you are adventurers?” the man asked.

“You are?” Illyxa replied in a tentative tone.

“We’re not exactly mercenaries, though,” Fuan said, disdain clear in his voice.

“Fuan, we should hear out what he needs. One should always do the right thing, if one has the ability to,” Hyi said.

“If it pays the tab,” Illyxa added.

The Halflet man gave a small nod, his eyes lingering mostly on Pin and Illyxa. Small folks tended to be comfortable with one another, after all.

“We’re looking for help dealing with bands of Naga,” the man said. “They’ve been attacking our homesteads, and eating some of our people.”

“They have! They have!” a Kobold barked, hurrying alongside the Halflet. “Especially in the Jeyack Valley.”

Hyi let out a shocked gasp, which in turn led to Fuan rolling his eyes. Ignoring them, Illyxa focused on more pressing matters.

“Homesteads? So, you’re farmers?”

“Refugees working to make a living,” the Halflet gentleman said. “Fifty years ago, our ancestors were forced from their lands by the last peace treaty between the Divine Alliance and the Draconic League. While many others moved to other parts of the Alliance, our forefathers felt betrayed and chose to set out—”

“Do you have money?” Illyxa interrupted, realising the man was about to tell the entire history of his clan.

“Some,” the Kobold replied. “There’s silver to be found in the Jeyack Valley. And the trade routes along the Waste always want out crops.”

The Halflet nodded.

“We might be able to arrange something, then,” Illyxa said.

“What about the mission I’m paying you for?” Fuan hissed.

“You can’t mean to leave these poor folks to be eaten by Nagas, can you, Fuan?” Hyi asked.

He muttered something under his breath in Elven that caused Hyi’s eyes to flash with indignation. Illyxa hadn’t quite caught whatever it was, however. It had been something adjacent to sarcasm and Elven grammar was simply too complicated for her to ever properly learn, taking decades to properly understand. The best a Goblin could ever hope to master was enough to either stay out of trouble or get into it, depending upon their mood. So, mostly the latter. But on purpose.

That in mind, Illyxa decided to ignore him and work on haggling a price from the mustachioed Halflet. She wanted enough money to make it worth her trouble, but knew she was dealing with farmers. Even if they were well to do ones, there was still only so much money to be drawn from them before they’d get offended and decide against negotiations.

By the end she haggled them up to a few hundred silver for the whole party.  Not as much as she’d like, but she needed some spending money and she doubted there were any Automan banks on this side of the Waste. They were truly at the back side of nowhere, after all.

Illyxa also had a slight soft spot for small folks being bullied or eaten by Nagas, even if they were Alliance peoples. She had a bad history with those snakes…

---

Using the excuse that they needed to clean their teeth, Illyxa pulled her cousin away from the others for a moment. Into a watering room, with a small fountain in it, as well as a latrine running along the side.

“Gragya,” she said, in a sharp whisper.

“Yeah?”

“I hate that I’m saying this, but… I want you to split off and go meet up with the snakes.”

“Really?” Gragya asked, surprise obvious in her voice.

“I hate snakes, but I can’t trust a bunch of Alliance folks completely. They like to take and take and never stop,” Illyxa replied.

“Mhm, you don’t have to tell me. Still, these aren’t Dwarven settlers.”

“That’s why I’m giving them a chance,” Illyxa replied.

Gragya nodded. “What will you say to the others? They’ll wonder where I went.”

“I’ll tell them that you got distracted by a nymph or something,” Illyxa replied. “They’ll believe it.”

“… Yeah, ok. That’s fair,” Gragya muttered, with just enough sense to look slightly ashamed.

With that, Gragya went over and shimmied open a small window. It was a tight squeeze, the window designed for privacy. The sight was rather amusing for Illyxa to watch, even if her cousin’s struggle was overly quickly. A good reminder that Gragya had a little bit of Goblin flexibility, despite having mostly taken after her mother. Goblin limbs bended and folded in ways that most other peoples found disturbing.

Once Gragya had gotten out, Illyxa turned around and headed back out to the main portion of the restaurant. The others bought her cover story with minimal questions, though the Halflet farmer seemed disappointed to lose the largest member of the party.

“Please, I’m the heavy hitter of the party,” Illyxa said, trying not to feel offended and letting a little magic dance on her fingers. “Now, lead on, mister farmer. Let’s see where you want us.”

“Of… of course,” the farmer said, while the other tables of Halflets and Kobolds gathered together.

The way the gathering of farmers (mostly women, children, or men too old to fight) celebrated the news of having successfully hired adventurers left Illyxa feeling a touch guilty about how little she trusted them. Only a touch, though.

---

After buying some food and water, Gragya wandered off into the bush around the town. She’d been aware enough to ask which direction the Jeyack Valley was, but didn’t really know what she was doing after she got there. Avoiding the farmers was obvious, but making a good impression with the Nagas might be trickier. Their scouts usually tended to be male, and she wasn’t great at smooth talking men.

Well, she’d worry about that when she found them. First she had to actually find them, which meant wandering across the tree dotted savana and hoping she didn’t get lost.

The things she did for Illyxa… (she could have just stayed in town and found a cute girl, but nooo…)

---

The group arrived at a homestead in the early evening, sitting on a small bluff overlooking a shallow valley. There was a palisade set up around the settlement, with a number of kobolds on patrol with small polearms. Stepping inside the walls, she saw there were a number of tents set up, families inhabiting them and looking like they were starting to grow more established in what were originally temporary homes.

“They’re mostly from the upper valley farms, where the Nagas have hit the worst,” the lead farmer said, his moustache vibrating like some sort of creature as he spoke. “There’s others still staying in the valley, but mostly downstream of where we are now. So the Nagas attack here first.”

Illyxa gave a small nod, looking the area over. It seemed all rather flammable. 

“So, our main job is to just give the snakes a bloody nose the next time they attack and then hope they sit down to negotiate?” she asked as they headed towards the main building.

“Well, we don’t need to negotiate. We just need them to respect the original agreement, that we could settle the plains north east of town and then the Jeyack Valley,” the elder Halflet said.

“Mhm,” a woman a little younger than him added. “We don’t want anything more, and we’ve stopped anyone who wanted to settle past the valley.”

Pin and Hyi both nodded along, seeing that as all very reasonable. N’ratha looked generally uninvested, but was holding a professional neutrality on her face. The look of a mercenary who did what they were paid to do, without caring too deeply about why they were paid to do it. 

Fuan, however, was making no major effort to disguise his disdain for the whole distraction. It was easy to ignore him, though. They were going to have to hire a boat and would benefit from having silver to do it. It wasn’t like there were many trading vessels likely to head between this forgotten corner of the world and the Moon Palace, however close they might be to it now.

“Can I see the treaty?” Illyxa asked. “Maybe there’s something in the wording that explains the source of the misunderstanding?”

“There’s no misunderstanding… those snakes betrayed us,” a younger Halflet gentleman muttered.

Like most of them, he was dressed rather nicely. Expensive and fine clothing for a farmer. Maybe most Halflet men didn’t dress quite as elegantly as Pin, but she was certainly seeing where he got his fashion sense from… there were even a few men in kilts about.

“If that’s true, then it would be rather useful to have it at the ready for peace negotiations,” she said. “A good reminder to the Nagas of the agreement.

The young Halflet made a face, but the leader gave a nod. He was clearly smart enough to see Illyxa was correct. A level of wisdom that would benefit many people in the world.

The leader led her into the main building and up stairs. Stairs that she could actually use like a normal person as they were sized for Halflets and Kobolds. Pin followed her, but the others had to wait outside, finding the low door and ceiling too awkward. 

It was not a large building, so reaching the study where the historical documents were held was a short process. The pair waited as the farmer sorted through a few documents before producing a roll of parchment. He handed it to them, the pair reading the side written in Common. Then she and Pin turned their attention to the other column, written up in Orcish (a language Nagas had largely adopted for their own internal affairs).

The issue became rather apparent.

---

So, falling for a snare trap baited with a leg of lamb maybe wasn’t the most dignified thing Gragya had ever done. In her defense, though, the lamb was barbecued to perfection, practically falling off the bone. The meat had probably been meant to be out of reach of anyone who sprung the trap, the whole thing straining as it was designed with small folks in mind, so she counted it all as a partial win for her. 

The small patrol of Naga warriors arrived just as she was finishing the snack up, so she waved the bone around a bit and asked if they had any more.

In response the snake-ish men had exchanged wary looks and then decided to take her to their village. She had been pretty sure she could have won a fight with them as they were minimally armoured and their spears were rather basic, but being led to their village had been her goal. So, she counted being taken prisoner as a near complete win. (Arriving at the village not a prisoner would have been better, but she’d long ago learned not to let ‘perfect’ be the enemy of ‘good enough’.)

The village was not a very permanent looking settlement, at least as she could tell in the light of the setting sun and scattered fires. Some stone and wood structures looked solid enough to last for years, but the surrounding tents had them seriously outnumbered. She remembered from her youth that secondary granaries and the like were common things to build for semi-nomadic folks. It was also a good way to mark a place as ‘yours’, assuming your neighbours were the types to actually respect that sort of thing… unlike Dwarves.

Once she’d been poked and prodded into a small clearing in the middle of the village a rather ancient and large female Naga emerged from the largest of the permanent buildings. That was one of the interesting things about Nagas… they never stopped growing. They also grew elderly rather slowly. Gragya had heard rumours that some of the eldest of their kind could rival giants, and did no doubt it, looking at this woman who’s humanoid form was easily as large as an ogre.

So, probably large enough to eat Gragya, if she decided to.

Was this whole bit a person sacrifice thing? A semi-cannibalistic ritual?

If it was, then Gragya wouldn’t have to feel bad about fighting her way out.

“What brings you to our landsss, Gorc?” the elder Naga asked in stiff and accented Orcish.

True Orcish, too. Not the accented Common that some Alliance types seemed to think was what ‘Orcish’ refered to.

“My cousin sent me,” she replied. “Those small folk farmers wanted to hire her—”

“Traitorsss!” a number of villagers called out as others added, “Thievesss!”

The elder raised an arm to placate the crowd, then gave Gragya a glare that said was to continue explaining herself.

“They were offering a pretty good amount of silver, but… well… they are from Alliance lands. Even if they left. As Goblins, we know what Alliance settlers can be like, so my cousin sent me to find out the other side of the story.”

The elder gave a small nod. “Good. Yesss. I am sure thossse sssmall thievesss lied through their teeth… they were not allowed to settle the valley, and yet they did. Who knowsss what they might take next. We shall show you the truth, and then, perhapsss, you and your cousssin will aid us inssstead, eh? We’ll let you have any sssilver you can plunder, asss we have no great need for it.”

“We jussst want our hunting landsss!” a villager shouted.

“Refuge from the Dragonsss!” another added.

“Dragons?” Gragya asked.

Another slow nod came from the Elder. “We normally hunt in the Waste to the south of here. Sssand beast meat is a delicacy we trade with other tribesss… but Dragon armies have been disturbing the creaturesss of the desssert and have forced us to head for… sssafer landsss. Only to find thossse miccce and dogsss have stolen our valley.”

The elder then turned around, gesturing for Gragya to follow as she moved into one of the stone buildings. There was a small chest in one of the corners, which the woman flicked open. Then she pulled out a scroll and passed it to Gragya. It had a bunch of rambling legal text on it, in Common on one side and Orcish on the other. She decided to try reading the Orcish, even if she was pretty sure legalese was its own language, regardless of which tongue it pretended to be.

Skimming it, Gragya felt her eyes starting to glaze over until she reached a key line. The one that said where the ‘Displaced Small Folks Company’ were allowed to settle. The Jeyack Valley was not part of that. It was the start of Naga lands.

“My cousin was going ahead to the settlers’ head compound, to make sure they had the silver promised. Take me to her and she’ll happily help you,” Gragya said.

“We were planning an assault in the morning… knowing we have extra allies is reason to celebrate more tonight, however,” the elder said.