Kyllian stood up in one jump, the man reflexively flinched and started looking for an exit.

  " Don't bother trying to get out, the only exit is the front door you had to go through, I just wanna talk."

  " I have nothing to say to you! You- you savage !! "

  " Oh come on, for a little bar fight ? Happens all the time in this city. "

  " It was not a bar fight ! You brutally murdered someone.. "

  As they were talking, Kyllian was slowly walking towards him and the man ended up with his back against a wall.

  " He was human garbage, no one will miss him. "

  " You may look human but you lack humanity, young man. "

  " Thank you, I hate humans."

  Kyllian was now right in front of the man, he placed his hand on the man's shoulder.

  " Please don't hurt me."

  " It all depends on your willingness to help me. "

  " What do you want ?... "

  " Where is your friend ? "

  " My friend ? What friend ? "

  " The younger guy with pieces of glass in front of his eyes and the maps. "

  " I don't know who you are talking ab- "

  The man was interrupted by Kyllian punching the wall right next to his face, the punch was strong enough to shake the windows above their heads.

  " I asked once nicely, I won't do it twice. "

  The man had a nervous laughter, he was shaking like a leaf.

  " Ok ok ok ! We decided to not sleep at the inn for obvious reasons aha. Bu-bu-but we managed to find another place and we stayed there fo-for the night ! "

  " Where ? "

  " In the Salamander district, it's half an hour's walk from the inn."

  " The Stuffed Squash ? "

  " Yeah .. "

  Immediately Kyllian grabbed the man by the collar and started dragging him towards the exit of the shop.

  " Oh buddy, we need to go now, you really aren't lucky. "

  " Why is that ?! And stop pulling so hard on my shirt! "

  " Because this is a local meeting place for the worst folks in town, gangs, prostitutes, thieves, assassins. The best that Kolipa has to offer, you and your buddy are easy prey in here, let's hope we can get to him before they take the maps."

  " You mean before they hurt him ? "

  " Hmm ? Oh yeah that too. "

  The two of them passed Hytham's who was standing at the counter.

  " Hey ! Where you going ? You really gonna sell those rings somewhere else ? "

  " No but I'll be back later ! "

  " Alright. "

  Kyllian was walking as fast as he could towards the Stuffed Squash, the man behind him was following with difficulty but he knew he had to keep going if he wanted to help his friend. They arrived at the tavern, the building was a giant square building with three floors, most of the building wood was rotten and a part of the roof was missing. Being a square it had a central staircase leading to all the floors and there was five rooms on each side of the buildings, it was not uncommon for people to simply fight off or murder the previous room owner and then sleep in the room.

  When they entered they saw the second man Kyllian talked to the night before, he was holding his bag extremely tight, surrounded by a group of four men and a woman. They were laughing at his painful attempt to defend himself against them as they were picking on him left and right. Finally one of them snatched the bag of maps and started running around with it like a child under the cheers of his friends and the rest of the tavern. The little group was having fun passing the bag from one person to another, when he tried snatching the bag from one of the thugs, the man with the glasses received a powerful punch to the gut, making him collapse. Three of the gang members then proceeded to kick the man while on the ground. Kyllian quickly assessed the situation " It's going to be painful but if I take those three in one go, no one else will join the fight despite their other two friends. I need to keep my hands cold. " He took a deep breath and ran towards the group of men.

  " HEY ! Take on someone who can fight back ! "

  He jumped off a nearby chair and kicked one of the man in the temple, in a crouched position he then deliver a powerful uppercut to a second one's private's, incapacitating him, the last one barely had time to realise what was happening that Kyllian use his palms like hammers to smack his ears. With his ears ringing, he tried throwing a blind jab that Kyllian easily ducked under, just like what Hytham did to him he tossed the man over his shoulder and knocked him out cold with a powerful punch to the nose. In a matter of seconds, he had taken out three thugs larger than him. The two remaining ones, a man and the woman stood there grinning, the woman stepped up, she had long black hair and multiple tattoos on her arms and neck, she was wearing an adjusted leather armor and had a few knives on her, she was walking towards Kyllian while making one of them twirl like an expert. She lunged at him and barely missed him, when she turned around she slashed at him with another knife that he stepped back in time to evade.

  " No introduction ? Also it's not very nice to enter a fist fight with knives. "

  " Hmmm, what's wrong little boy ? Afraid to get cut ? "

  The man grabbed Kyllian from behind and started to bear hug him. The woman dancily walked towards him with a smile on her face.

  " Two on one ? Not a fair fight. "

  " .. who said it was supposed to be a fair fight ? "

  She tried to strike him but he used his leg to push against her, sending him and the man backwards, landing on his back, the man's grip became loose and Kyllian broke free from his grasp. Instantly the man grabbed him and tried to pin him face first against the wall, Kyllian used his momentum while running towards the wall and to everyone's surprise, ran up the wall with two steps and executed a backwards flip during which he grabbed the man's head. Using gravity to his advantage, he slammed the man's face on the ground while landing. When he turned around, he pivoted on himself to dodge yet another knife strike from the woman. and kicked her in the back, sending her to a nearby table. Enraged she tried slashing at him time and time again, he was waiting for an opportunity to striked and it presented itself to him as she lunged at him with both her knives up, he instantly rushed her and grabbed her wrist. Applying pressure to her wrist he made her drop the knives, he then looked her in the eyes and smiled.

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  " When I said it was not a fair fight, I meant for you two. "

  " You son of a b- "

  Before she could finish her sentence, he grabbed her collar and hit her with a strong headbutt, knocking her out instantly. Kyllian looked around the room.

  " Anyone else want some ?! "

  The customers went back to their business. Kyllian tossed the woman aside and checked her pockets where he found a small pouch of coins " good enough, let's see the others. ". After he was done looting all of them he walked back to the two men he was interested in. Still frightened by him, they both stood close to each other.

  " Oh come on, you can't be that scared of me. I just saved your life ! "

  " We are just going from one disaster to the other. "

  " Let this disaster offer you a drink, come sit with me. "

  The two men reluctantly followed him towards the back of the building, this part was almost spotless compared to the rest of the building, Kyllian smelled the chair before sitting on it and passed his finger on the table looking for dust. He then sat down and invited the two men to sit. A young waitress came to their table to take their orders.

  " Gentlemen, what can I get you ? "

  Kyllian answered before the two men could utter a single word.

  " Give us three fire brown ale, no sugars and some dry sausage, not the purple one, the green herb one. "

  " On my way ! "

  The waitress went away and the three men stood there in silence. Kyllian decided to break the ice. He smiled at them and held out his hand to shake theirs.

  " Well let's introduce ourselves shall we ? I'm Kyllian. "

  The man with the glasses took a deep breath and shook his hand.

  " I'm Yordan, I am what you would call an archivist, I keep maps and I take notes of important places or events for the future. "

  " So you are a bard ? "

  " No. I don't sing."

  " You know bards can be poets too. "

  " I said I take notes of events, not the same as a bard. "

  " But you eventually tell those stories and rewrite them, right ? And you distribute them for a price probably so it's a bard. "

  " I'm not a bard !! "

  The second man had a chuckle and held his hand out to shake Kyllian's hand.

  " As unpleasant as it is for me to say, greetings sir Kyllian, my name is Dagissaro, I am an inventor or engineer. "

  " You invent things that blow up from what I saw. "

  " Science is sometimes .. tricky. "

  " Hm hmm. "

  The waitress came back and poured the three of them a bubbly scarlet liquid, she then placed a plate of dried sausage seasoned with herbs on the table. Kyllian smiled at her as he took his drink before she went away.

  " Thank you. "

  The three men raised their drinks.

  " Cheers ! "

  They all took a sip and both Dagissaro and Yordan coughed their lungs out as the drink entered their throats. Kyllian bursted out in laughter at the sight of them. Yordan managed to speak in between his cough.

  " What in the "achk" Creator's name is this ?! "achk""achk" ".

  " It's fire brown ale. It is a brown ale with spices, don't worry you get used to the feeling, don't let it sit in your mouth, it can make you bleed if you let it. "

  " IT WHAT ?! "

  " Ahah i'm joking ! "

  " Very funny.. "

  " So, you're gonna let me see those maps ? "

  " You are gonna take them anyway, so go at it. "

  " Thank you. "

  Kyllian pulled out the maps and laid them on the table. He knew of the other continent and countries but could never place them on a map. " This is way bigger than what I expected. "

  " So I heard you say you needed to use a boat to reach the dragon queen's continent, why is that ?

  Yordan lifted the map Kyllian was using and pulled out another one to complete the whole frame.

  " So you see this? Our continent is diamond shaped and here we are at the base of it in the south and the point of the diamond is the northern territories. This is our current location the country of Euhya, then north east from there is Fardug who has been for the last century in an all out war with Tzungstat up north west. They have been gaining grounds on each other back and forth but recently the king of Fardug has been trying to go through Triskal up north but as you already know, the blizzard from the witch is an impossible barrier to penetrate and the whole country has been isolated from the world for the two decades."

  " I thought the blizzard was only around her domain. "

  " No, that's the common belief, the truth is she trapped the entirety of her country, making it impossible for foreigners to enter or leave. For all we know everyone in there could be dead, even her. And then, cut off from the rest of the world, you have the demi-human nation of Elzerath completely to the north at the top of the "diamond" . Now if we look on the other side of the ocean, way west of here we have the continent of the dragon queen : Mada?nn. Unified under her guidance at least past the chain of dragons."

  " What's the chain of dragons ? "

  " It's a succession of gigantic mountains, extinguished volcanoes separating her kingdom from whatever lies beyond it. It was said that when men started roaming earth, dragons decided if our species would survive by making one of us fight one of theirs. The ancestor of the dragon queen named Healon Docekary had been chosen to be our champion. He would fight a dragon as a human.

  " And did he win ? "

  " No, but his bravery stood out to the legendary beasts. He battled with the dragon name Rash'Neaal for days, when Healon realised he could not win against the dragon he did something that no one thought he would do, he strapped himself to a tree saying "If I die, I will die standing up.". Upon seeing this act of bravery, the dragons took pity on us humans, realising our strength was not physical but our minds could not be broken. So they burned the grounds, melted it into lava and dug deep underground. They rumbled the earth and created a chain of volcanoes who not only set out to be their homes and watch towers but also our only defense from the dark forces. "

  " So dragons live in those mountains now ? "

  " Not anymore, this happened thousands of years ago, the dragons left or died. "

  " So she is called the dragon queen just because she is a descendant of some fairy tale hero ? "

  " Yes and no, when humans started understanding magic, her ancestor Orion Docekary repelled by himself an army of a thousand men, and with overwhelming power he subjugated the entire continent which was broken apart in many kingdoms, one after the other the kingdoms were offered a simple choice, rally under the banner of the Docekary or see themselves burned alive where they stood. The Docekary are a lineage of conquerors, even though they have no need anymore to conquer, genocide was a common practice .. "

  " Why do people speak so highly of her if she has such a tyrannic history ? "

  Dagissaro joined the conversation by pulling out a small glowing gem.

  " It's because they have those magic gems cut out from the remnant of the dragon's power, their aura, or magick as common folks call them, filled the mountains and now they are full of them. To these people, they are common. To us, this little piece right here is worth a hundred coins. So knowing this, once the Docekary were done pacifying their entire continent, they refused to keep on going with the massacres and decided that a whole continent was good enough. So they started trading with this continent but the trade is very complicated."

  " Why ? "

  Dagissaro pulled out another map showing what was south of Euhya.

  " As you can see, Euhya and the continent of Mada?nn are linked by a gigantic desert which is mostly unexplored and inhabitable for humans. People have gone through that desert to go to Mada?nn but this is an incredibly difficult journey. "

  " Ok, I understand why there is a need for a boat, I know of a port up north, called Sutra. "

  " Do they have authorization to travel past the blockade ? "

  " What blockade ? "

  " There is a blockade by the kingdom of Fardug, they are the reason that the trades have been more and more difficult. They hate magic and magic users with a passion but fate made it so that they are the closest country to Mada?nn so it's easier to go from there. "

  " Yeah but if they hate it so much they will block anyone going anyway. "

  " Not necessarily, they sent convoys to set up colonies on the continent of Mada?nn for "research". "

  " So your plan would be to embark on one of those convoys to get to the continent ? "

  " Well that is what Yordan wants, I still think the desert is better. "

  Yordan smacked Dagissaro behind the head.

  " You say that because you are afraid of water! "

  " Not only that! Finding the boat is something easy but we would require to be given entry to Fardug in the first place. "

  " We will work something out. "

  Kyllian looked at the map with intensity.

  " This is too complicated, I'm sure we can find what we need over at Sutra, and if it doesn't work we keep going because it's on the way. "

  Dagissaro and Yordan looked at each other for a few seconds, and they ended up nodding.

  " We can try. "

  " Yeah I guess we can. "

  Kyllian smiled and raised his cup again.

  " Cheers to our safe travels ! "

  " To our safe travel ! "