Chapter 4 - Part 14

The young brass dragon was cleaning his pipe. He would have been smoking it, but the old copper who currently led them - which was not the right word, not with a group that was considered proud even for dragons - had expressed displeasure at it. The brass was not about to lessen the slightest impact that his words might have when debating.

"You did well, darling," the young green said, sliding his way to the angry gold female who had been concentrating on the crystal.

"I did nothing!" the gold snapped at him - literally, she swung her teeth near his neck and he barely flinched away in time. "I focused out power, true, but I merely held a window in the timestream. The Captain, or maybe the half-daelkyr, they found it."

The brass frowned, then tucked his pipe away. "So where are they, then?" eh asked patiently.

"More importantly," rumbled the old copper. "When are they?"

"I don't know," the gold said, the admission paining her.

"They're back, and they're within two hundred miles of their departure point," the brass said suddenly. They all turned to him. "The Crimson Ship moves the universe around itself. That means it came back not far from where it left, as it focuses itself as a central point. Giving drift for tides and Eberron's magnetic field, like so..." He summoned his innate powers, and a floating translucent graph of equations apepared above them. "So they would be within this circle."

"And the fiends may still get them," hissed the green, for once his mind off of his mating instinct.

"The Captain's price is conflict," the copper mused. "There is someone in the southeast corner of that circle. A hobgoblin mage who fused himself with certain elements, long ago."

They all were silent for a moment.

"Say it already!" the gold hissed. "It's not like we aren't in deep enough debt to the druid already!"

The copper sighed. "Contact the white druid," he ordered. "See his price for finding the Cold Mage."