We still have several more days before the banquet, and Tittlin is itching to go on more hunts while I’m running out of storage space for all these specimens. Tittlin suggest having Rafnar teleport them back to my laboratory, but having them rot there isn’t much better than letting them decay in the field. After all, where am I supposed to get enough ice for proper preservation? I’d need tons of it just to keep everything fresh long enough to extract useful components.
The thought occurred to me - perhaps I could replicate whatever magic preserved the Jade Lady in her cottage. She was kept from aging artificially for who knows how long. With my necromancy skills, I might be able to work out something similar to extend the usefulness of these monster parts. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the practitioner, just the victim, so asking her for technical details would be pointless.
I push it to the back of my mind as we get to the hunt board. After some debating, we settle on a request for retrieving a white dragon’s breath pouch. According to the information, it should be roughly the same age Ignis was. We should be able to handle this, but given how Spesof almost died in that fight, we decide to recruit Ghurde for this hunt, paying for Rafnar to teleport her over.
The trek to the dragon’s lair is uneventful, as my magic brings us directly to the caverns. I put up Rary’s Telepathic bond and after a minute or so of debating, Tittlin heads in invisibly to find where the dragon is. It’s a good thing that we did, as the the cave system is extensive, filled with perhaps thirty to forty giant spiders in addition to not one, but two young white dragons. We may have been able to clear it out, but between not knowing how the spiders would behave and (to my embarrassment,) not knowing the vulnerabilities of the dragons, things could turn sideways very quickly. Our first choice of plan would be to sneak past the spiders and kill the dragons, but the rolls of my dragon bones did not augur well for that. Our second choice was the straight-forwards fighting our way in, reducing the chance of getting flanked, but this was vetoed when Ghurde’s reading drew the Tower.
Racking our brains, we came up with a third plan. We’d sneak in invisibly, and Ghurde would summon an earthquake to trigger a cave in, killing the spiders and injuring or trapping the dragons. In order to protect ourselves, I would shield us with a Wall of Force. To reduce the chance of a miss-read, both Ghurde and I divined the outcome. With it turning out as weal for both of us, we put the plan into action.
Between us all being invisible and the silence granted by Tittlin’s recently discovered elven magics, the first step of the plan went off without a hitch. We reached the center easily and found the two dragon’s eating what appeared to be a woolly mammoth. As Ghurde began casting, I simultaneously brought up the invisible shield to protect us. The spell’s effect was unmistakeable. As the ground began to shift beneath our feet, I could hear the ice and stone groan above us, with dust and glittering pulverized ice filtering through the air. With a wave of frantic chittering, the spiders fled back through the tunnels we had entered through, heading towards the South-East. The dragons however, did not seem bothered by this. It sounded like the North-Western tunnels were beginning to collapse, but to our horror the sound was actually two adult white dragons.
I froze in fear, my mind rushing as I tried to figure out what we should do. Luckily, they did not appear to see us. As I was debating reshaping the wall to allow us to escape, I could hear the dragons call out to the young, telling them to leave as they followed the same exit as the spiders. I breathed a sigh of relief, which was interrupted with surprise as only one of the young dragon’s heeded their parent’s advice, leaving a single young dragon still gorging itself on the mammoth.
Waiting a scant few moments for the other dragons to leave earshot, we set upon the dragon, our combined assault felling it in quickly. It was now obvious that the white dragons were weak to fire as Ghurde extinguishes the magical fire.
With the urgency granted by falling rocks and the dragon’s potential return, we grabbed any treasure close at hand and fled West, Ignis carrying the dragon on their back. We flee quickly, the tunnels forcing us South as we make our way out.
After making some distance between us and the cave, Gherd preserves the dragon with Gentle Repose before methodically breaking it down with Enhanced Ability, far better than I can at the moment. Within short order, we have the breath pouch that we’ve been looking for.