The Third Princess's Identity...?
Kuuung—
"Haaah…!"
"She landed. She actually came…!"
Tene folded the wings she had held spread wide and at last set foot in the heart of the Great Forest — Helio Forest.
Thud—!
At the same instant, the ground around her landing point alone sank into a deep crater, once more broadcasting the sheer presence of that colossal body.
"……"
"…*Gulp*…!"
The elves who stood in a wide ring around the scene, not so much as blinking, felt their mouths go bone-dry. Hands that gripped bows and staves grew slick with sweat.
A dragon.
A single breath that could scorch the earth, a single kick that could wake the land itself — the strongest of living beings, regarded as the equal of the gods.
In pure greatness, nothing could surpass the World Tree, the elves' own creator. But with little more than a flick of a finger, this creature could reduce every elf present to so many scattered pieces.
And this was no ordinary dragon.
The legend of the Thousand-Year War. Death itself. The great sinner who had insulted the gods.
Eternal Darkness — Tenebrix Nox.
Even Norton Gius, the living Great Library and the sole figure among them who could claim to speak for the elves — third seat of the Council of Elders — had known of her only through the legends passed down by his predecessors.
Why Tenebrix had woken from that deep slumber, and why she was here now…
None of that mattered to them in this moment.
The mere sight of Tenebrix Nox had already left them nearly ready to abandon all attachment to life.
Long-lived though their race might be, springing the news that you are about to die with zero warning was still enough to make any elf push back — unless, perhaps, they were some three-thousand-year-old elder. Death was a terrifying thing even to them.
And yet, faced with death given form right before their eyes, not a shred of resistance, not a flicker of the will to survive, not a single impulse of any kind rose in them.
All that remained was the simple thought: Ah. So I'm going to die.
Thanks to that, a few among the gathered elves had already drifted into a state of pure detachment, wearing only faint, serene smiles.
And so the entire plaza held its breath, silence alone remaining.
Folding her spread wings and surveying her surroundings, Tenebrix Nox opened her mouth.
It was only a single simple sentence, yet the elves felt a chill of death wash over them in that instant.
Heavy and yet impossibly light — a contradictory presence that stirred contradictory feelings — Tenebrix Nox continued.
"Hey! You're doing it again!"
Thwack—
"Haaah…?!"
"Sh-she hit the dragon… ghk."
"A… aaargh…! Gurgle—"
"Guh… guhkh…!"
In that moment, a human woman dared to cut Tenebrix Nox off mid-sentence and drive a fist into the dragon's massive forehead. More than half the watching elves rolled their eyes back and frothed at the mouth on the spot.
The other half simply could not decide whether what had just unfolded before their eyes was reality or a dream.
"Knock it off already. Look at all their faces — they look like they're about to drop dead."
"…What is this? Am I dreaming right now?"
"Tenebrix Nox… apologizing to a human?"
"World Tree have mercy. Is what I'm seeing with my own eyes truly real…?!"
"Have I been taking too many herbs lately…? Am I actually just sprawled out at home right now, completely high?"
Just as the elves began outright denying reality, a slightly dejected Tene rested her chin on the ground and swished her tail, offering it as a staircase for those still riding on her back.
"Ah— Mommy—!!! Mommy!!! It's me, it's me!!!"
"…Shalle?"
Climbing carefully down Tene's tail one by one, wary of slipping, Shalle spotted a familiar face among the clustered elves. The moment her feet touched solid ground she kicked off and barreled toward her parents, wailing.
"Mommy! I rode on the dragon's back and flew here! Isn't that amazing?! Huh?! So actually, when I went to the human territory undercover on my mission, she was already there! The second I saw her I froze solid, passed out on the spot, my disguise magic fell off, and then when I woke up I ran into her all over again—"
"Uh… uhh… Right, uh… Mommy has no idea what's going on…"
After the most turbulent few days of her entire elven life, Shalle had come home, seen her family's faces, and launched into a nonstop stream of chatter — exactly like a child back from her first field trip, bubbling over with everything that had happened that day.
"Haaah…"
"Pardon me. Might you be the representative of these people?"
"…Hhk?! Ah. Ahem…! That, yes… I am… Wait, how—"
While Norton Gius stood staring blankly at the scene, a human woman had somehow already reached him. She asked the question with a kindly smile, and he flinched before he could stop himself, then cleared his throat and confirmed it.
"My apologies for the late introduction. I am Freyja Evergarden, Countess of the Evergarden Territory under the Obina Empire."
"…I am El Grisa Norton Gius. I am most eager for an explanation of what on earth is going on here — but first, that… ah, that one… erm…"
"Ah, please forgive the discourtesy… Tene?"
As Freyja began her introduction and Norton Gius carefully shifted his gaze toward the dragon still sprawled belly-down in the center of the plaza, Freyja caught the look and called out.
Tene answered at once — and politely, no less — then exhaled a plume of black smoke.
It was the phenomenon that accompanied every casting of Polymorph magic: a surge of immense mana flooding the surrounding air.
"First of all, I am aware of the matter that concerns you most. However — regarding the condition of the two elves named Shalle and Lio, and the earlier bombardment… well, I understand that from your perspective it was fully justified self-defense, yet the fact remains that you took no further action even after a direct hit. And I would like you to know that the dragon is under our control."
"…True enough. Had we counterattacked then, we would not even be able to open our mouths now… I can understand that much. But it is also true that far too many things still make no sense."
"I fully understand how deeply unsettled you must be. So I would like to discuss matters in greater detail… Is there a place where we might speak?"
"I shall guide you to one. Before that… I would like to dismiss the people gathered here. Would that be acceptable?"
"Yes, that's fine."
A dragon had appeared out of nowhere, two elves had arrived on its back, and the humans' identities alone raised a mountain of questions that needed answering immediately — yet Norton Gius managed to hold himself together and continue the conversation with her in a calm, composed manner.
"Ah!! Clothes!! I just realized I didn't pack a change of clothes!!!"
"…I'm terribly sorry, but might we borrow a spare set of clothing, if you have any to spare?"
"…I shall have some brought at once."
…Even in the middle of all this, Freyja was also requesting clothes for the childish girl currently sitting flopped on the ground, stark naked save for a bare covering of her vital areas.
"I've been inside houses made of wood often enough, but a house made inside a tree is a first for me."
"It's fascinating, sure, but if a fire ever broke out in a place like this, the whole thing would go up and leave nothing but ash, wouldn't it?"
"Something about the smell is incredibly calming…"
"Must be because it's the elves' forest — the surrounding mana is remarkably pure and clean."
After a brief exchange of greetings with Lio and Shalle, who had returned to their homeland, the building Norton Gius led them into proved to be a house carved out from within a colossal tree.
Countless small branches grew throughout the interior, each still bearing fresh green leaves. The furniture was much the same — tree stumps used as chairs, patches of moss here and there. It was exactly the sort of space one would expect elves to inhabit in a fantasy world.
"That… is it truly all right?"
"Yes. As long as no one bothers her first, nothing will happen. Well… even if someone did bother her, nothing would really come of it either."
"She's a good kid."
"…Haaah. In all my years, I never dreamed I would live to see Tenebrix Nox sitting in Helio Plaza. And in an intact plaza, no less — not a ruin."
Having personally guided them this far, Norton Gius kept glancing out the window of the room, eyeing Tene as she sat awkwardly in the center of the plaza, then repeatedly pressing a hand to his forehead.
The great Tenebrix Nox herself was putting on a perfect impression of a dog waiting for its master. He could no longer tell dream from reality.
"First of all… you said the reason you came here was… what, again?"
"It's simple. This emblem. We are looking for the one who drew this emblem."
Freyja proceeded to restate, in earnest, the reason they had come.
Pointing to the logo drawn on the merchant-caravan permit documents that Lio and Shalle had submitted, she continued.
"We have come to learn the intentions of the Third Princess, who drew this emblem."
"This is… certainly the emblem drawn by Her Highness the Third Princess, as I understand it, but what on earth about it…?"
A human who had marched in leading a dragon as if ready for war was, in the end, asking about the emblem of a merchant company meant to lay the groundwork for expansion into the human world. Norton Gius's face twisted with sheer absurdity as he started to speak —
Bang—
"So— you came looking for me, did you?"
The closed door swung open at once, and someone stepped into view.
An elf girl whose height put her somewhere between early childhood and adolescence by human standards — roughly a fourth-grader.
Hair that shone like molten sunlight, gold shot through with the green of the World Tree, cascaded past her waist and lent her an air of the sacred. Her eyes gleamed gold as well, and her ears ran a touch longer than those of ordinary elves.
On the broad, childishly cute forehead sat a beautifully carved tiara of woven branches, making it plain at a glance that she held a considerably high rank.
And yet—
"You little brats sure have some fire in you! Hahaha!"
A cigarette smoldered acridly between lips that looked like they ought to be sucking on candy, and despite an appearance that left one wondering who exactly was calling whom young, her speech was pure old man — the cadence of someone seventy or eighty years old.
Anyone could feel how jarringly out of place her presence was. And she was the very person they had come for: the elves' princess, the one who had drawn the emblem that sent the entire Evergarden family flying straight here.
The Third Princess — Celebrian Estelle.