Chapter 26
Loretta stood beside Karl, watching the approaching village. Jagged, rocky peaks soared above the airship, far too high for Bill or anyone else to navigate over safely. Countless sparkling blue streams gathered out of the mountains to form the river that sustained the village below them. If she followed the twisting course of that water, she could glimpse the Fog in the distance, the hard boundary around all of Alterra.
She'd had no plans to return to the Northlands, not for a long, long time. She'd hoped a few more years would have passed before she had to. The more she thought about it, though, having a spare compass and maybe a spare Dragon wasn't a bad idea at all. Even in such clean, idyllic settings, the air sharp and cold as ice in her lungs, people didn't live forever.
