>>6197165You wanted that white wyvern, and not for anything as mundane as a gift for Princess Yulia. You were the only gift she needed. But that wyvern had the distinction of being one of the few flying mounts in the world that you would be able to ride yourself. An opportunity like this may never come again. You planned on killing the leadership of the Cult of the Serpent yourself anyway, so as far as you saw it, this changed nothing. You leap onto the table so that you are eye level with Uriyan. You then grab his outstretched hand firmly.
>“I accept your challenge.”“Hah! I knew you would!” The man responds with a grin.
“Warlord Uriyan!” An Almyran cheers.
“Warlord Uriyan will claim the white wyvern!” Another exclaims.
“No, Lord Tristain will!” A voice that sounds suspiciously like May’s pipes up.
Excusing yourself from the chaos of the tavern, you have one final stop you wish to make in your preparations for tomorrow’s battle. In your time at Hima, you’d yet to visit the town’s market. Proper shopping was always a necessity before running off into battle. This was a lesson you’d had instilled in you at a young age by your aunt’s retainer, Corrine. Blair’s right hand woman and a Blackwing officer, she once spoke of how your aunt would agonize for hours inside every shop they came across. She would internally debate with herself on what to buy, as though each purchase were a matter of life and death.
While you could probably chalk most of that up to women and their natural affinity for shopping, you had to admit you could see the wisdom in this. And while you’d lost a hefty sum of gold to Uriyan in that bet, at least you still had the Green Gem that 99 had given you, which should be worth something good.
“I have to say, you and that Uriyan fellow are awfully similar.” Cassius says. Him and Nadia had joined you on this shopping trip. You’d left May back at the inn, afraid her predisposition for stealing might come out if exposed to Hima’s market stalls. “Do you perhaps have Almyran blood in you?”
>“First off, that’s rude. Secondly, my parents did spend some time in Almyra, but that was long before I was born. And they were causing trouble more than they were acting like tourists.”Rex d’Rusalka and his merry band had spent several months pillaging the Almyran countryside, culminating in the slaying of one of their vaunted Four Warlords. This Uriyan would have been the rank equivalent of the man your father had killed some 25 or so odd years ago. Not too many years after that, your aunt Blair would go on to perform a similar feat. Given that Uriyan did not comment on hearing the d’Rusalka name, perhaps Almyra had forgotten about your family?
“How could you say such a thing?” Nadia chastises Cassius. “Lord Tristain is far too chiseled to be of the same breed as one of those mangy Almyran dogs.”
