Mott had a smirk on his face, hidden by his voluminous, and, frankly, luxurious braided beard, but Luthiriensis saw it. He wanted her to see it. A bold move from the dwarf, considering she could stand on him. She gave him a sideways look and then turned a smile toward the dragon. The dragon smiled, too, but, being a dragon, Pinto looked more like she had a view to eat them both. All teeth and long, forked tongue.

"Best get on the way. Got to register and I'm down to my first, third and secret fourth coin pouches. Not my main coin pouch. That's hidden." The dwarf moved a furtive hand toward his backside. "Don't ask where."

With a pained grunt, the dwarf wheeled on the spot, his far-too-big axe almost slipping from his shoulder. He started to walk in one direction, stopped, looked around him, up to the sky, back the other way, and then started to go in a completely different direction. Dwarves were not known for their above-ground navigation skills, far more at home in musty mines and dirty caves. Or so Luthiriensis believed.

"But we don't need to register." The dragon had relinquished their hold on Luthiriensis' waist and tapped Mott with the tip of its tail on his shoulder. "That's just a lie the cryer made up. I heard him and his guards talking, while invisible. Apparently, the King doesn't know about that."

"Those thieving ...!" The dwarf's face reddened, then purpled as he moved his axe to both hands, shaking in fury. "I'll give them 'register'!"

"So we don't need to spend money. That still leaves the Fields of Carrion to cross, the Canyon of Self-Doubt to navigate and Bernard's Apple Orchard to avoid before we get to the Tower of Miscalculated Confidence!" Luthiriensis may not have wanted to join the hunt for the child, but she did hear things. "Not to mention the layer of the Miner-Tour. And no-one wants to see that!"

All of those places, and things, had taken the lives of several adventurers. Especially the Miner-Tour, which had caused several to die of boredom. Or so she had heard. The way to the Tower of Miscalculated Confidence, and the supposed location of the stolen child, held many dangers. Danger was not something Luthiriensis had a particular need to face. Or hear about in passing. The most danger she forced herself to face came from sharp needles in her embroidery attempts.

"Ah! See! We don't have to!" Pinto curled almost their entire body around and pulled a large knapsack around to their front. Luthiriensis hadn't even noticed the bag. "Just give me a ... no, not that ... ooh! I thought I'd lost that! ... no ... no ... Yes! Oh. No ... Aha! Here it is!"

From inside the bag, showing remarkable dexterity for a dragon, Pinto removed a large, rolled-up scroll. The dragon stretched out across the ground, unrolling the scroll as it did so, flattening it and reaching for a nearby stone. The scroll rolled back up before Pinto could place the stone on a corner and Pinto had to go through the whole rigmarole four more times before Luthiriensis relented, holding one side taut while Mott dropped the butt of his axe upon the other side.

It was a map. Perhaps calling it a map was a little generous. More than a little generous. If one could compare Pinto's letter writing skill to that of an obese jellyfish attempting to navigate the ins-and-outs of magical theory, Pinto's map drawing skill resembled an overworked oxen forgetting where it had last pulled a plough through a field and had decided, instead, to vacate its bowels in the bed of its farmer. It wasn't a good map.

Various scribbles and wavy lines represented nothing that Luthiriensis could describe, in the multitude of languages she had mastered, anything that resembled landmarks. And she could easy mistake the annotations for the bored ramblings of a decrepit, dementia-suffering fish. It made little sense, but the dragon appeared quite pleased with itself.

"Have you, perhaps, been experimenting with dark magic? Using entrails of unsuspecting creatures to summon a demonic presence from the Underworld?" Mott crouched low, which was easy done for someone his size. "What's that?"

"That's a butterfly." The dragon looked sheepish, a flash of crimson colouring the iridescent scales upon its face. "I like butterflies."

It looked like the twisted progeny of a rotted apple and a kobold's cauliflower ear. The dragon would have to perform a feat of explanation that could, if related to others, become a legend of clawing back a disaster to a mere bump in the road if it expected them to understand the meaning behind the map. Luthiriensis leaned over, supporting herself on her knees and tried to look as though she had an inkling of what the map said.

"I don't have a clue what any of this means." She wafted a delicate, perfumed hand over the stretched out scroll. "It looks like nonsense."

"No. It's perfectly clear. Look! There's the Withering Weald, which is far nicer than it sounds. That's the Ravishing Rut, which is, well, not nice, but it is thin. And this ..." The dragon's claw tapped upon something that looked like a dying worm had writhed upon it in the last throes of life. "Is the Marsh of Unpleasant Stuff. That's where the heir is! That's why we're going to find him and that's why I need your help."

"Why? You're a dragon that can turn invisible and human." Mott wiped a chubby finger under his expansive nose, then used that finger to point at the 'map'. "Just fly in there, breathe fire all over the place, pick up the kid and fly out while invisible. Simple."

"Well, for one, my wings are vestibular." The dragon hooked a thumb behind its shoulder and the sweet, tiny wings flapped furiously, but uselessly. "And for another thing, I'm a sylvan dragon! Sylvan dragons don't breathe fire!"

"You don't?" Mott gave a thoughtful grimace before frowning. "What do you breathe?"

"Air." Pinto shook its large head, eyes rolling, then held up a long, sharp-looking claw. "And for another-another thing ... Gammer Goodhiding scares the scales off me."

Pinto's last words almost faded into silence and the dragon looked everywhere but at Luthiriensis and the dwarf. It seemed like there was a history there which needed examining but Luthiriensis had no interest in exploring that. At all. Also, it came across as though Pinto expected them to know who, exactly, this 'Gammer Goodhiding' was. She didn't. And she doubted the dwarf did, either.

"But this ..." Mott waved a dismissive hand across the poorly drawn map. A map not poorly, as such, as hovering between the gates of Death and the Underworld, trying to decide which afterlife was more ghastly. "This is all in the wrong direction. Popular opinion is that Gerart the Unflavourable stole the child after the King said something less than complimentary about Gerart's collection of spice racks that he made, by his own hands, in crochet. It was all the cryers could call out for weeks."

"They're wrong. I know the heir is here because I heard it from Heminee the Floridly-Bemused, who heard it from Alfnakt of the Immediate Frustration, and he heard it from the pixies of ..." The dragon stopped as it saw the fury upon Luthiriensis' face. "Are you alright? You look ... hungry?"

"Pixies? Pixies!" Luthiriensis' hands folded into fists, gripping the shimmering, and expensive, soft and opulent dress. She stopped, realising nothing was worth putting creases into this material, and released her grip. "You can't trust pixies! They lie and they make fun and they lie and they put things into beds that should never, ever, even come near beds, and they lie and ... and ... they should wear some kind of clothing! I mean, honestly! Fluttering around naked? What if a child sees them?"

"They'll think it's cute to see a floating doll?" Mott gave a noncommittal shrug, but he didn't know. He couldn't understand how malevolent Pixies were. "I mean, we dwarves often mine naked. It can get uncomfortably warm in the deep veins."

"They're pixies! Pixies are not 'cute'!" Luthiriensis turned her ire upon the dwarf, adjusting her view to glare down at him, but she could only see the top of his jauntily lop-sided helmet. "You mine naked? That is something I would very much not want to see. Ever. Pixies, though, cannot be trusted!"

"Ah, I see where your problem is." Pinto gave a knowing nod and tried to wink, but it came out more like a strained blink, both eyes closing. "These were dire-pixies. Totally different. They're all doom and gloom, and 'woe, woe and thrice woe' and they're far too small to ride horses anyway. But one thing they don't do, is lie. Something about life being far too hard without making it worse by not letting other people know how vile and murderous the world truly is."

"Oh. Well. That's alright then." Luthiriensis smoothed down the skirts of her wonderful dress, trying very hard to show a little dignity after her outburst. She inclined her head in a graceful, magnanimous fashion. "Continue."

Pinto accepted Luthiriensis' magnanimity with a flourish of a bow which sent a wave along the dragon's body, causing rippling curves to pass along the length and back again. How they expected to do anything with a dragon in tow, she couldn't imagine and, though she didn't know what a 'pretty-pony' was, she felt quite certain it didn't represent a long fragment of time, so the dragon would not remain invisible, or human, anywhere near long enough for those abilities to be any help at all.

"As I was saying, the DIRE-pixies of The Unlimited Gloom heard it from an embittered toad who works for Gammer Goodhiding. See, direct evidence." After a while, the dragon realised they hadn't actually finished telling the tale. "So, anyway, the gist of it all is, is that the Beldames of the Marsh of Unpleasant Stuff are performing a ceremony on Moon-Trots Eve, a powerful magical time, apparently, involving the King's heir. That's it. That's the story and I swear it's true."

Luthiriensis took a moment to consider the dragon's words. While it was true that everyone had absolute confidence that it was, in fact, Gerart the Unflavourable that had awayed with the princeling, the stalwart crochet creator had stated, on many occasions, that he had nothing to do with the heir's disappearance. Most notably with a crocheted note stating the same, stuffed into the mouth of the decapitated head of an unfortunate failure of an adventurer.

It was also quite true that the upcoming Moon-Trots Eve, the night before the moon flatulated its essence across the heavens, was a time of unadulterated magical excess with many ceremonies, rituals and parties occurring at the time. It only happened once a year and the smell could last for weeks, only adding to the magical potency of potions, draughts and other magical whatnots. It was plausible. It could also explain how so many lauded and competent, for the most part, adventurers had tried, and failed, to bring the child home.

"Alright, then. I'll help." Luthiriensis attempted to look noble and fearsome, but neither the dwarf or the dragon seemed to notice. "I'm going to need to pick up some essentials from the inn, first."

She loved it when she was decisive. Now she only had to decide which dresses to pack.