While the crafty merchant and the hot headed smith finished their not so quick chat, promising each other to meet up in the coming few days, before Tajed has to leave again, and the pull of different lives once again calls upon them; the man they were talking about, the emperor himself, was deep underground in his ancestors' personal training chamber, surrounded by the steam and water of what used to be a solid ice block, as a flame the size of a torch's light blazed in the palm of his right hand.
Alexander was beyond elated, his smile as infectious as it was frightening, for he finally, after relentless, unfaltering diligence of arduous training that bordered on masochistic torture at times, he finally managed to unlock his third gate after a mere three years, an achievement that only a scant legendary few could ever claim in the many millenniums long history of the world.
