He stirred in the other ingredients, balancing his attention perfectly between drinks and discussion.
“Well, I wouldn’t do it for free.”
“Wouldn’t you? If you didn’t need the money and this place couldn’t function without you, wouldn’t you help if they asked?”
“I suppose.”
“So perhaps the money isn’t really what matters. Perhaps the money is working in service of the city just like you. You both play your part. Two of the many moving pieces that this city needs to function, the same as the smokestacks and the cobblestones and the newspapers and the fire.”
He brought the two thick drinks back to our table and pointed at the fireplace behind me.
“Who does the fire work for? All of us? For itself? Does it care? It burns just as brightly no matter what purpose we bestow upon it.”
We tapped our glasses together and I took a sip. It was sweet, but unlike other cocktails (or the same one made by less skilled hands) the sugar didn’t kill the more complex flavors underneath.
“Fetch, you know what Dragons are, don’t you?”
“I’ve seen pictures at the museum. Big, scaly monsters, right?”
“They can evolve into all manner of creatures but yes, common Dragons are just like you say: scales, tails and wings. Miraculous creatures, each and every one of them. We do our best to protect them now but two hundred years ago, Dragon-hunting was a highly regarded profession.
“Unlike most warriors, Dragon slayers had no national allegiance. This freedom allowed them to work in any land, for any species, and become rich as princes if they were successful in their craft. Towns would hire slayers for protection. If an attack had already happened, they would pay for their revenge. On top of that, Dragon scales and bones were precious commodities that the slayers would sell for a small fortune on top of their fee. Above all this, their most valuable prize was fame.
“It’s hard to imagine now. Dragon slaying, like most mercenary work, has gone quite out of fashion. I take some responsibility: the Opus has made a concerted effort to cut down on the number of free agents out in the world, swinging swords for profit. There are so few Dragons left that killing one constitutes a crime but, back then, there was no career more heroic, exciting or profitable.”
Unlike Hendricks, who had spent three hundred years exploring every corner of Archetellos, I’d only seen two cities in my life. Weatherly, where I grew up, was surrounded by high walls that hid the outside world. Sunder was multicultural and ever-expanding but it wasn’t without its limitations. After three years in the one place, stories of the outside world were starting to make my feet itch.
“You’ve seen the way children here talk about sportsmen, or how ladies fawn over the troubadours singing at the playhouse. Well, Dragon slaying was all that rolled together and multiplied by ten. We knew their names, we traded rumors of their exploits and sung songs of their adventures. They had streets named after them and replicas constructed of their swords. They never paid for a meal, never paid for a bed, and rarely went to one alone. There was nothing else like it anywhere in the world. Every species and town had their heroes, but a Dragon slayer belonged to everyone.
“Of course, this brought an incredible amount of competition. As Dragon numbers dwindled, any rumor of a monster started a race without rules. Carts were sabotaged, meals were poisoned and swords were put through slayers’ chests while they slept. Many fighters became more concerned with beating each other than the Dragons they’d been trained to battle.
“Then, one night, a group of merchants arrived in Lopari. They claimed to have seen a burst of flame in the Sunderian swamps that lit up the sky and shook the earth. The rumor had barely been spoken before a young warrior named Fintack Ro was leaving town on horseback. It didn’t matter to Fintack that nobody was paying a bounty: his prize would be bones, scales and, most importantly, a boost to his reputation. Though there were hundreds of aspiring slayers in the world, only a handful had truly proven their worth. Fintack was younger than the others and he’d come to the game just before the Dragon population dropped.
“Older hunters could choose to retire: write a book, train princes for a ridiculous fee or open a tavern and bring in crowds by telling stories of their adventures. Fintack was still an up-and-comer. He needed that one great kill. He needed one of those tales that had wings of its own and flew from the tongues of travelers like a plague in winter.
“Fintack stocked up on rations, sharpened his weapons, and was the first warrior to arrive in Sunderia. He spent a whole week hunting through the swamps, his socks always wet and bug bites rising on his arms. He traveled during the day, slowly and dangerously, and at night he’d stay awake as long as he could, searching for fire on the horizon.
“To his frustration, the first signs of life came from the camps of rival slayers: other top-tier warriors who were stumbling around the swamps, equally empty-handed. Finally, one sunrise, Fintack woke to find the ground rumbling around him. He opened his eyes to see a ball of orange flame rising from deep in the mangroves. He grabbed his sword and ran right for it.
“He had learned how to navigate the reeds and puddles, knowing which mud would hold his weight and which would eat his shoes. His hands grabbed branches that were black with soot, and he sensed that the creature must be waiting up ahead.
“When he cut his way through a web of vines, another burst of flame erupted right in front of him, but he still couldn’t see the beast. He squinted through the mangroves, searching as he crept onward, but when he heard the others closing in on his position, he was forced to step out into the clearing and face…”
Hendricks took a long sip to extend the tension.
“… nothing. No movement, no tracks, no sign of any Dragon at all. Fintack searched in all directions as two other slayers joined him in the clearing: a Wizard named Prim and a Dwarf called Riley. All three warriors looked around, confounded and frustrated. Then, from the center of their triangle, a stream of fire shot out from the swamp and up into the sky.
“There was no Dragon. It was a decoy, made by the land itself. The slayers were frustrated. Angry. Tired. They called a truce and set up camp. Fintack killed a water-bird and attempted to roast it on the next burst of flame but Prim gave him warning: as a Wizard, he could sense the power beneath their feet. This wasn’t just some pocket of fiery swamp gas, it was a glimpse at something far more powerful.
“That night, the slayers didn’t tell tales of past battles or trade information on different types of Dragon. Instead, they pondered what it might take to bring that fire out of the ground and use it for fuel. The warriors had spent their lives traveling Archetellos. They’d seen families, caught without a home for the winter, frozen by the side of the road. They’d seen Satyr slaves up in the Groves collecting coal to warm the Centaur palace. They knew all about the Dwarven forges that were powered by lava and could only be worked while deep inside dangerous mountains.
“Until that night, these warriors had served nobody but themselves. You could not have found more prideful, ambitious cut-throats anywhere on the continent. But standing right here,” Hendricks stomped both his feet on the stone floor, “they saw an opportunity to make the world a better place. Those three slayers used their influence to build a city like nobody had ever imagined. They gave up everything that had previously defined them. They relinquished the prizes they had been working so hard to find and, in doing so, they changed history.”