"Sure, it was magic." Crow said as if it was the most natural explanation in the world.

"Thank you for fully explaining the situation, my wise sword." Frei groaned and slowly stood up, reaching for Crow. "Better do a walking stick again and spare me your nonsense."

"What? People always explained strange situations with magic. It is normal!" Crow protested, but Frei did not even answer, continuing in their original direction.

What else was there to do? He could only pick himself up again and continue in the journey. On his way he saw some monsters killed by claws and fangs of vampires and understood why they had not met monsters on their previous journey.

"Some of them had to follow the group all along,." He felt that something about the situation did not fir, but thinking about it more would not help, he needed to distract himself in a city or his head would burst. He walked swiftly forward and noticed first fields in the distance.

"That is a good sign." He smiled and sped up even more.

  The farms were nothing special, if this world possessed some magical or technological means to increase production of farms, the few farmers around him that toiled on their fields did not seem to possess any. Frei would be surprised if they had something expensive, the land next to the deserted forest had to be dangerous and of low value.

  With suspicious positioning, Frei saw a person looking like a beggar loitering exactly at the place where the dirt road they were following changed into a pawed one. The man quickly steered his steps to be next to Frei when he passed by, he was sure that he was going to pretend to be a war veteran or some other poor existence and request financial aid. Actually, Frei still had some coins in his inventory, but it was certainly not enough to throw silver around.

"Get out, quick! This spot is mine!" Frei was dumbfounded by the beggar's behaviour, because it was totally not what he had expected.

"Y-Yes, chill man, I have no intention to be here longer than necessary. Have a coin." Frei threw a silver coin at the scary beggar that was in an intense shoo off mode, Frei's pride hurt a little to be mistaken for one of his kind and the man's expression went through a plethora of changes, stabilizing on a smug smile.

"Sir! This poor beggar has mistaken you for someone else, please excuse my rudeness!" He made an insincere bow and continued. "Perhaps sir would be pleased if this poor beggar told him about the regional customs and legends, your journey had to be hard and long!"

  Only now had Frei realized that his tattered, torn clothes was really making an impression of a beggar or someone who had nearly died on a long journey. He wanted to find some excuse to get rid of the intruding entity in front of him, but stopped himself in the last second.

Hearing out some local gossip might be of some use.

"If you say so." He assumed a meek attitude, awaiting what wondrous tales would exit the beggar's mouth.

"I am actually an expert on local folklore, you come from the direction of the dragon ruins, a great serpent city! In old times, dragons sparred in the great arena, lording over men and beasts alike, their mighty figures traveling back an forth through mystical portals to their fabulous city, the Scalefrost Capital! " The beggar began his rant, his pupils following the palm that had given him the silver coin like he was a dog expecting another treat.

  Frei wanted to wave the bothersome beggar away, but hesitated when he heard his tale. There indeed was an arena and he had some of the dragon themed art in his inventory. How much of what the man said was true? The beggar noticed that Frei hesitated under the barrage of his words and immediately continued.

"Yes, the Scalefrost Capital, dragons have abandoned the local ruin for its insignificance, but their mighty capital is said to stand to this day. No one knows its location, but many mystics tried to repair the portal in the ruins leading there and they claim it is possible! Can you imagine what would it be like to enter through it the capital city of true dragons? There sits the mighty hero of the True Dragon race, the True Emperor, Thaal Dane, also known as Duriel's Bane on his throne of pure, crystalized mana, his body is said to be indestructible and his magic omnipotent, able to bend all rules of reality!" The beggar was getting worked up and Frei had to keep his distance to be out of range of his spit. but something was keeping him glued to the story.

"Bend all rules? That must be a nonsense." He doubted the tale, but the beggar could sense his reluctance and pressed on.

"Not at all, sit! Even The King of The Golden Mountain, Duriel had been obliterated by his all powerful might. Duriel was a mighty king of dwarfs that in his vanity amassed a mountain of gold, but it was still not enough for him. He wanted to build a great engine of magic and alchemy that could create gold out of nothing and In the end, Thaal Dane had to smite it into oblivion along with the mad king, as the engine threatened to destroy the very fabric of the world!"

"I see." Frei had quite enough of the dubious information the beggar provided and was searching for a way to get away from him. Luckily, he saw another person in a distance with an attire much more refined than his.

"Look, that person seems quite lost." He interjected before the beggar could continue and pointed with his hand, the beggar following the direction with his eyes.

"Indeed, excuse me kind sir, but I must help the poor man! He looks lost indeed!" The beggar blurted out quickly and had no care for what was Frei doing anymore, attracted to the glitter of fine clothes.

"That was intense." Frei sighed and quickly continued in his journey.

  He walked through the farmlands until he saw a town with a decent stone wall protecting it on its perimeter. It was just a few meters tall, as expected from an ordinary looking town. He saw a tall spire extending from the rural castle in the middle and it reminded him of a spear one of the statuettes held in its hand.

And something else.

"Damn, don't tell me!" Frei quickly took out one of his statuettes that he hoped to sell soon, a fierce dragon holding a lance in one of his clawed hands. He turned it around to see an inscription on its bottom.

In honor of Thaal Dane, Champion of The Arena. May his strength never falter.

"The beggar was just blabbering nonsense right?" Frei asked, but he was no longer sure.

"Why? With magic everything is possible." His cane spoke.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Your opinion is as valuable as ever. Change to something else, I do not want to look like an old fool in that town." Frei snorted and watched Crow transform into a vine bottle.

"You can look like a drunkard if you want." Crow said and immediately changed into a kitchen ladle.

"Or an idiot."

"Fine, fine. Thank you for your valuable opinion, please change into a sword." Frei sighed and waited until his companion assumed the requested form.

* * * *

A person dressed in tattered clothes strolled through a rural town at the edge of the human lands, while holding a kitchen ladle for some unfathomable reason.

"Bah, a baroness is in the town, we can't let you in with a weapon, Mayor's orders. What nonsense is that? Doesn't she have guards?" Frei fumed, he really felt like an idiot. However, he was in the town and that was what counted.

"Tankard is another option." The ladle whispered.

"No, that is even worse than a bottle. Forget it, we will manage somehow." Frei had been suddenly stopped by a row of people in front of him. The street ahead seemed to be closed off, the city guards waiting for some sort of a procession to pass by. He could only stand and wait, observing the shops around him, most of them looking old without any upper floors. Next to him was a sign with a single word, PROPHET, written in capital letters.

"Huh, some fortune teller?" Bored, he looked inside the door lacking establishment and a voice called to him.

"Come in!"

He would not have entered if he could continue , but with the street blocked, there was nothing else to do anyway.

"What does a prophet do?" Frei asked after he entered the shop that was apparently selling all kinds of trinkets that were supposed to have some mystic powers. Frei had seen some shops like this even on Earth and his opinion of them was not high.The old woman with white hair behind the counter was quite perceptive and could sense his condescending attitude right away.

"Welcome customer, I see that it will be quicker to show you than to try and persuade you to buy something. Give me something personal and I will show you a vision of how it came to be." The old lady said and Frei had an impulse to insult her in some way, but then decided that the best way to show her what he thought about prophecies would be to reveal her incompetence. He searched his body and pockets and in one of them, he found a crumpled piece of paper. Something he had long forgotten he had.

"Work your magic woman, I am eager to see your great powers." He said with a smug and gave her the crumpled letter that he had received when he had been in the lands of elves.

"Oh, a letter." Frei thought that the women would try to unwrap and read it, not knowing that the letters were mostly unreadable by now, but she just touched it and smiled at him.

"Give me your hand." She stretched out her hand towards him and he decided to play her game, he was curious what kind of trick she was going to pull.

The moment her hand touched his skin, he felt a sensation of his consciousness leaving his body and a vision appeared in front of him.

  There was a tall wall that was not unfamiliar to him, he understood that he was looking at the Waldorf Castle from above. After a while, his sight zoomed in to see a portion of the wall where two people stood. Not people, vampires. One of them had long, white hair and was bent over something lying on the wall. He knew both and recognized them immediately.

Their mouths moved, but he could not hear any sound, as the vision seemed to be only made of images.

"Only visuals? This is so useless!" Frei thought as he watched the two vampires talk while the one with long hair was finishing the letter. "Was she fucking even him? I would not be surprised, that bitch really knows no shame."

  He watched how Nitarja lifted a strand of her hair that was purple, which was odd. She then pointed at some tool that was lying on the wall and he recognized the instrument the Waldorf guards used to check them when they had tried to enter the city nearby. The purple strand of hair was shorter, its tip looked like it was burned off.

  His attention shifted to Nitarja's face and could see that her expression was not at all what he had expected. There was no sneer, no ridicule, it was a face full of pain and sorrow.

Slowly but surely, everything began to click into place.

The letter, its content, the purple strand of burned hair, the tears in her eyes.

"NO!" Frei shouted and the vision faded away, the picture in front of him morphed into that of a surprised fortune teller that had clearly expected a much milder reaction.

"Is the vision true?! Is it true?! Tell me the truth or I will kill you where you stand!!!" Frei grabbed the fortune teller's neck with his both hands and shouted in her face.

"It shows how the letter was written, it is authentic! I swear on my life!" The old women said hastily, scared out of her wits.

  After a moment Frei released her without another word and threw a handful of coins on the counter to pay for her services. Not waiting for her reaction, he quickly left the shop and wandered off, walking mindlessly through the town until he found a dark alley where he sat heavily on the ground, his eyes staring through the wall, unfocused.

"I was so stupid." He stated and his right hand touched his chest. "She chased me away to protect me, using the damned letter to keep her distance. She never wanted to kill me, how could I be the only one that survived from the whole group of seven?"

"And she is under a vampire count now? That is even worse than Victor! What can I do?! What can someone like me do?!"

  Every single unrealistic plan that he had thought of before replayed in front of his eyes and all of them seemed even more impossible than before at this point, when she was apparently not serving under Victor anymore, but under Count Waldhaiss, the lord of the Waldorf Castle. Instead of bringing his plans of freeing Nitarja of the blood bond closer to completion, the situation was getting more and more hopeless.

"There is nothing I can do." Frei answered his own question and his shoulders sunk.

There was no hope.

  He did not know how long he had stared blankly at the dilapidated hut in front of him, watching the shadows grow as the dusk drew near, the long shadows giving the black alley a unique haunted atmosphere.

"Pull out the statue." Crow spoke, but Frei was in no mood for his quirks and ignored him.

"Pull out the statue now!" Crow repeated with a seriousness in his voice he had never heard before.

  Frei's hand reached into his inventory like it was functioning on an autopilot and pulled out the statuette of a dragon with his lance lifted high as if the beast wanted to pierce the sky with it.

"Turn it around and read the inscription." Crow instructed him and Frei mindlessly turned the statue to see the text engraved into its bottom.

In honor of Thaal Dane, Champion of The Arena. May his strength never falter.

"What of it? A useless trinket." He let the statuette fall out of his hand on the dusty ground.

"You stupid! Don't you get it? Thaal Dane, Champion of The Arena! Thaal Dane, the True Emperor! At one point in time, he was clearly a gladiator that fought in the same arena you and me had stood in a few days ago, this is from the time he won a championship and later, he became a dragon emperor with his body . . ."

". . .indestructible and his magic omnipotent, able to bend all rules of reality." Frei finished in Crow's place as he remembered the beggar's tale. His back bent and he lifted the statuette, staring at the inscription again.

"This is probably the prize given to gladiator Thaal Dane ages ago, long before he reached his omnipotence." Crow said with eager voice and waited for Frei's reaction with great expectation. He did not need a companion that was a hair away from a suicide and what story was greater to motivate a man in a hopeless situation than that of the emperor of dragons, Thaal Dane?

Crow observed as Frei held the statuette in his hand tighter and tighter, muscles and veins bulging on his hand to the point it began to tremble.

"You are right, if he was able to rise from a gladiator to a god, so am i!!" Frei stated with bloodshot eyes. "We go to the dragon city ruin to find the portal to the Scaleforst Capital, the dragon emperor will surely know how to break the blood bond. I will enter into his service!"

  If Crow had eyes, they would have been blinking with surprise. It seemed his plan to motivate Frei towards some sort of a positive action had backfired, its success too great for their own good.

"Wait, wait! The mountain is swarming with undead! You do not know where the portal is or how it works! What if the emperor swats you with his wing into a bloody pulp the moment he sees you!" Crow was trying to lessen Frei's enthusiasm.

"In a sense I too am Champion of The Arena, left last standing on its blood stained sand. May my strength never falter!" Frei said loudly.

"But you have no strength to begin with!" Crow shouted, but his companion was deaf to his complaints.

Crow watched the horrifying radical change in Frei and understood that love was not a feeling. It was a weapon of mass destruction!