“Amelia Faust…” Cyrus drawls, his fingers tapping at the table. “The last time we saw each other you blew up a quarter of the town and almost, almost killed me.”

“You were being petty,” Amelia responds deadpan.

“Fair enough,” Cyrus sits up a little straighter and looks again at me. “Find a new friend?”

“Hi there, I’m Abigail. Abigail Steele,” I introduce myself with a small wave. He looks me up and down, almost like a disheveled drunk looking at a serving girl, but his eyes are calculating, glowing almost.

“Cyrus,” He says with a wry grin. He stands up and bows and when he comes back up, he brushes his hair back and for a moment he looks like a handsome young man before slouching back in his chair. “Do you like to read Miss Steele?”

“I do,” I say, “I almost had a small library back home.” Cyrus grins wide and leans down to a small canvas bag at his feet and he pulls out two leather bound books. Opening them up he signs them both and offers them to me.

“Two more for your collection then,” He says kindly, but I look down at the books in my hands. I realize with a pang of remembrance that I no longer have that little library at home, and that these are the only books I possess now.

I swallow hard and start to speak when Amelia pulls a chair out for me and we both sit. “Actually, I’m not here for a petty squabble,” She starts, “Seriously, I think something bad is coming.”

“Possible war, Bakiri beginning to raid villages and creep outside of their territory?” Cyrus shrugs completely unsurprised, “yeah, that’s been coming for a while now.” He catches my look of confusion and goes on to explain. “I’m a writer, it’s my job to know all sorts of weird things, and the possibility of an oncoming war is certainly something to write about.”

“I haven’t heard anything about the Bakiri,” Amelia moves aside some of the empty cups and leans over the table. “Are they truly beginning to move?”

Cyrus nods and opens his mouth to speak when Connie returns with a Fizzy Pepper and he quickly grabs it and takes a long sip. “Yeah, rumors about them are all over the place. Three villages now, ravaged and burned to ashes, which isn’t unusual except they’re pushing outside of their usual range. These have all been human villages.”

I swallow hard. The Bakiri are creatures I thought to be myth for the longest time, but as I got older, I knew them to be real. Lizard like creatures, that stand head and shoulders above even the tallest man, with superior strength and speed. I heard they lived in the mountains more towards the East, but they could be reaching out more this way. If they left their home, even a small number of them could bring a human army to its knees.

“That’s not good…” Amelia says, “because we didn’t know anything about the Bakiri,” she looks to me and I nod with her. Hastings never said anything about Bakiri, or monsters, as part of the attack. He just called it a resistance. “Abigail’s farm was attacked, she was the only one to escape, and she only made it out because a Northern Ranger found her and told her to carry the message of a rising resistance to the North Kingdom.” She continues on explaining to Cyrus, everything that I had told her earlier that day, and I’m relieved that I don’t have to tell the story again.

“Hmm… a resistance eh?” Cyrus says leaning back in his chair and analyzing me. “Why would a Ranger send a farm girl to deliver a message of such importance to the North. Wouldn’t the best plan be for him to have escaped and found a messenger? Even if your story is true, why would the North Kingdom believe you? Matter of fact why would you even continue your journey North, when you can send out a bunch of pigeons, or hire someone yourself to deliver the message.”

I sat there open mouthed; I’d never even thought of that. I’m so fayring stupid. Fayr.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself Abigail,” Amelia says touching my shoulder reassuringly and giving Cyrus a glare. “If I understand correctly, a lot has happened in a short amount of time, and I don’t know of many farm girls with the money, or the connections to get a message into the hands of the king so easily.”

“Fair enough,” Cyrus nods and takes another sip of his fizzy pop. “So, we’ve got Bakiri stepping outside of their bounds, and we’ve got a human resistance being built. This is something the North has never had to deal with.”

“Exactly, this is new,” Amelia agrees, “but I’ve decided to help Abigail, I feel it’s my duty to protect the North Kingdom even as a magician from the East.”

“Well, I hate to be that guy…” Cyrus shrugs, “but we don’t have any proof, it doesn’t matter if you were the queen of the East herself, if you don’t have any basis for these claims then they don’t mean anything. Until this resistance begins to make itself public, I don’t know what we do. If it’s too small to do that then it’s not a threat.”

“It was a threat to the rangers,” She counters.

“But we don’t know the circumstances, we just don’t.” He argues back, “until that resistance, if it exists, starts attempting to take over towns and making their move we really can’t do anything.”

Amelia lets out a sigh and hits the table with a clenched fist. “I hate it when you’re right, as few times as it is…”

“Excuse me?”

“So, you can’t really help me… can you?” I ask, and they both look at me. Amelia shakes her head.

“I’m so sorry.”

“That’s okay,” I say and stand back up. “Well it was nice to meet the both of you, and Amelia I appreciate the company.”

“Hold on, where are you going?” She jumps up and follows me, grabbing my arm as I begin to exit the tavern.

“I’m going to the North.”

“But you don’t have-!”

“Exactly,” I stop and turn back to face her, “I’m going North, because I have nowhere else to go. All I have to my name is a dream and these two books from that guy.” I point to Nathan who’s still sitting at his table, and he waves back. “It’s all I have. I need to keep going forward.”

Amelia bites her lip, and I can see that she’s conflicted, she doesn’t know what to do any more than I do. Then looking away she lets me go.

“It was nice to meet you Abigail.”

“Yeah, it was.” Then I turn and weave my to the door, and I’m off into the night.