If this was a dream, it was the best he'd ever had. Fran clapped his hands as loudly as he could, joining the crowd of men and women who stomped their feet, shouted, and hit the tables with their fists to the rhythm of the pipes and drums. Over the tables, another man accompanied Fran dancing chaotically and half naked. The tavern was full of laughter and the crowded space felt like a party full of friends you never knew you had. It was everything he could have hoped for and more.
The dancers had to leap from table to table with every fourth beat, but there were just two tables, and rowdy patrons pushed them and shoved them the moment they were about to jump. Two dancers had already fallen to the floor. Only Fran and another dancer were left, a man of olive skin, dark blonde hair and blue eyes, which a new friend had assured Fran was your typical Ergosyan look.
Fran faked a jump to his right, then quickly leaped to the table on his left, but a drunk man in a makeshift armor pushed it with all his might the moment the Terran was in the air. It was too late to change course. But Fran screamed with all his energy as he shifted his upper body. He saw from the corner of his eye how the other dancer fell on the armored man. His skull clanged like a gong against the man's breastplate. Everyone burst into laughter as the dancer's nose erupted blood like a volcano. Fran was still in the air. He shifted his weight forward, leaned in on himself and raised his legs over his body. The risky move gave him the extra half second he needed to shift right, landing on the table with a thumping noise.
Breathless, he rose his head to watch dozens of adventurers roar their admiration with clapping, laughter and glasses breaking against the tables and the floor. Panting like he'd run a marathon, Fran smiled. He observed the fallen Ergosyan dancer laboriously put himself back on his feed with a friend’s help. He laughed, pointing at his bloody nose. “It hurts! It hurts! It burns like Azgal's fire!”
“Azgadal’s where I come from,” said a lean, wild-eyed man to Fran's left. “Let me be the first to buy you a drink.” He quickly introduced himself as Urume Gulun, a member in good standing of the Guild of Explorers.
“This place is the only safe harbor for people like us, and it feels so good to be able to say it,” he added. “The Empire haaaaaaaaaaaates us. The world outside their beloved lands doesn't exist to them. Or shouldn't. And of course, those of us who roam unknown lands are nothing but rabble. The prefect would kick me out of this crappy, sleepy town if he learned my identity. And that's if I'm lucky and he doesn’t decide to make an example out of me. Fuck the Empire, Dhenn! Wait, you said you're not Imperial, right? You said that.”
“I did, Urume. You're good.”
“Great. Not that I mind. The Empire produces wayward sons too, thousands of them. Sons who don't want to go marry into a trading house, or take orders from the old farts in the Phoenix Legion. I want to be myself, and the more I travel, the more I become myself. Discovering your true heart is impossible if you live surrounded by the people you grew up with, the places you grew up in and the objects you grew up using. A fresh perspective demands fresh stimuli,” he added, quoting something. “Did you buy the scimitar for adventuring? You could do better, my friend. It looks made for an orc, or a human with arms twice as big as yours.”
Fran shook his head.
“I only got it this morning on the road to Kliogos. My arms used it just fine to kill the orc that used it against me.”
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“Wait. You killed an orc?”
The explorer looked at Fran trying to discern the truth of his words.
“You killed an orc earlier today? On your own?”
Fran nodded.
“It was my first time, to be honest. I have a feeling it won't be the last.”
“Hah! Look at you! I took you for a cub explorer, or a future rogue perhaps, but not the pickpocketing type. More like a trap expert.”
“You mean for dungeons, right? Not for me, Urume. I don't want to die in an underground tomb.”
“Knowing what you don't want is just the first half of a life well-lived. Now tell me what you do want.”
“I came here to… well, I couldn't tell you why I'm here, but I know I'm meant to challenge myself., whatever that means,” Fran said, shrugging. “I need a challenge.”
The explorer leaned in and lowered his voice.
“Music to my ears, friend. Because I have a job that would definitely challenge you. Are you free tonight? Are you a good actor? Answer the second question first.”
Adrenaline ran through Fran's veins like nobody's business. A feeling of invincibility had taken over his body, the kind of feeling that young men feel moments before demonstrating why men have a shorter lifespan than women. He nodded at the stranger and winked. Hell yeah, I'm a good actor. Sign me up for a Melan Oscar.
He met other adventurers that night. Men, dwarves, a hirsute man who claimed to be a werewolf, and two elf twins who had refused participation in their people's war of conquest against the faerie ancestral lands. “We're heading to the dragon city tomorrow, Dhenn. We've been told the Tree and Seesaw is a good inn for elves, so visit us there.”
“But I'm not going to that city.”
“Yes, you are,” said one of them. “You just don't know it yet.”
“Where else can you go to from here?,’ said the other one. Deeper into the Empire? There's no adventure there, no freedom. It’s nosey bureaucrats and tax collectors as far as the eye can see. Thank Azgal's greedy fangs for his generosity and protection. Come on, human! Your life is laughably brief and you're going to miss out on one of the wonders of Mela?”
Urume agreed with the twins when he heard the story from Fran. Azgal the black dragon had lived for centuries on a coal-black mountain just days away from Kliogos. He was over a hundred meters long, thousands of years old, and possessed the perverse, bird-like intelligence of his race. A dragon's disdain for the smaller species was a known fact. And there were no exceptions, which made the rumored existence of Imperial dragons a frequently dismissed rumor. A few dragons dwelled in isolated mountains. Most lived as part of herds by the snow mountains of Telbasi, in the perpetual Autumn of the forests and green lakes .
“My people are certain that lonely dragons are outcasts,” said the explorer, referring to the members of his guild, who met on the road to exchange news of their discoveries. “Azgal must have committed a heinous crime against his people, but who knows what’s a crime to a dragon?”
Criminal or hikikomori, Azgal proved unique among his race when he accepted the patronage of a cult of itinerant priests. These dark devotees were so vile that they were outcasts even by the standards of the arid Dagger Plains, where human sacrifices are routine and life has little meaning. Azgal’s guardianship birthed a trading post, then a city. The adventurers, exiles, and criminals of all kinds that populated it came to baptize it Azgadal, the Protection of Azgal.
“You should see the inns there… Yes, lots of opportunities for creatures of all kinds with low morals and high ambitions. I spent the last two months in that city negotiating the business deal of the century,” said Urume Gulun. “The ignorant folk of the Empire believe that explorers just draw maps of unknown coastlines, or name mountains and lands. We're what traders are afraid to become when they look in the mirror. New trading routes for spices? We discover them, we develop them. Lost temples and cold dungeons? Adventurers only explore them because we found them first. And then there's the one people don't think about, mining… New sources of gold, of silver, diamonds, soga or tennasteel, that's what makes legends out of men. Riches are for the timid, I'm talking dynasties and kingdoms, my good Dhenn. Unless a friend turns traitor and steals the map to such a mine from your own hands. Which brings me back to the challenge you seek. I have a proposal for you, but you can’t have time to think it over. You must decide immediately. Are you ready to listen?”