Chapter 1
3 years later:
Thalior dismounted his dragon, called Stonewall, and after he looked through the animal, he smiled after a long time. As the dragon played with his tale the good memories of the past years flew into the teenage boy's mind. Even though there were not so much, now it felt good to think through the changes the child had gone through in the past three years and as slowly as surely, he progressed to manhood. He was not the frightened little boy who had run away from the war, by then, ha had become stronger and also taller he was sure. And his hair was like sometimes a bird's nest even though he tried to keep his head tidy. However, he could not do anything with the fact that his brown hair curls had been hanging all around his head. At the same time, he was the same person in some ways, even though he liked the wandering life, far inside he waited for the end of his journey. Lot of things had been learnt by him through his adventures, he had accomplished his tracing, hunting and fighting talent, but he was ashamed the most by the last one, while he hadn't really want to kill people.
He only used his dagger when others attacked him, he never attacked others and swore he will not. When he could only hurt his enemy or just hit his weapon out of his hand he had done so. Although this does not mean he did not know how to use his white-silver shining, about 80cm long dagger, cause when it was needed, he could fight with the weapon like it was the part of him. However, it must be mentioned that he thought the dagger helped him in that, because it was forged in the early ages of the world, and somewhere south, cause he called at that time his home this, his teachers said that the ancient weapons were far better than the newer ones, while they were made by help of magic.
He really thought in where to go next, because two ways were just option, he did not try before. Still going to the north or flying to more north-west and after he flank the western pirates as he called them, he can go west. He wanted a place where he finally can settle down and who knows make friends maybe. It could be a while since he started thinking because the Sun was high on the clear blue sky. Suddenly sound of footsteps broke the silence, he stood first then listened a little bit, it was easy to realize, a person was coming right to him, it could be a child cause the sounds were less loud then we would expect from an adult. The other option was that the man who came was really careful about making noises by his feet and in that case Thalior thought it could be better to hide while if somebody walked carefully to him he would know that the boy is there and would come for him or to kill him. The boy hid behind a big rock and gestured to his dragon to shut up but don't hide because he thought it's such a tactical advantage to see the dragon firstly during a possible attack.
After a little while the source of the noise arrived and Thalior came out calmly after he saw a young girl coming with a money bag and a map in her hand. The boy knew who she is or at least he has saw her before and knew why she had come.
'My greetings little lady' he called her maybe a little too formally after he saw the girl's sniffed eyes.
'Good day sir' she tried to greet with the same formality in her trembling voice 'I brought your payment as you asked Mummy' and with that she would have given the bag to the boy if he hadn't interrupted her like
'I don't want your money, you can keep it' regretted her Thalior 'I checked over my supplies and realized I don't miss anything except a good map like the one you squeeze, thus if you don't mind I would take that from you.' Said his counter-offer friendlier to the child.
'It's okay, Daddy said that on it there were all the northern trading routes and his granddad had bought it from somebody.' Gave the paper into Thalior's hand. When the boy took it over the girl steeped two backwards distrustfully and was about to start her way home though the boy stopped her.
'Why do fear me?' looked right into the girl's scared eyes when stopped examining the map 'I mean I helped chase away those pirates who were raiding your father's trading routes' continued it unanimously
'Dad said not to make friends with strangers, even less with wanderers, he also said these southern foreigners cannot be trusted' she confessed, though her body was being shaken by fear like a leaf during the greatest summer storms.
'Understood' came out the intelligent answer. He already knew the distrust the people felt for the southerns though he'd hopped that that far on north the men didn't hear about the southern empire, where he had born too, so they won't look on him like on a stranger. The girl pulled him out his thoughts who was still standing and shaking as she would have been on a torture:
'Can I go?' asked hardly understandable.
'Yeah' came the whisper out of the boy's mouth so the girl ran away after a little thinking like she wasn't sure about what the boy had said.
Suddenly sadness flooded his heart. He thought his journey's end is close, but if he was like a stranger here too, called "southern wanderer" (that meant a warrior in the common people's eye more) as the others like him, he have to travel even for days to north, till he arrives a place where he could be one of the common people and not just hoping he's just passing through. Even though the sadness started to reform into a decision about he is going to settle down on whatever island he lands in the following three days. The deadline came from that he started the travel exactly three years ago. More plans hadn't been made; the direction was easy to choose: go north.
Before taking off he cleaned his armour what was a leather-armour painted grey and made by him trough the years of his journey. Under that he only wore a simple white-silver shirt which was got made based on the shirt he has started anno to remember him to his homeland always. He put his things together and sat on Stonewall and with the sunset they took off heading into the heart of the northern archipelago as the map of the trader showed.