The Fortress of Flames (1)
"Never thought I'd live long enough to eat a packed lunch on a dragon's back."
Rosaria wolfed down the last bite of her sandwich and licked the crumbs from her fingertips, muttering under her breath.
"Still, it is a pretty long way."
Felix nodded in agreement as he packed away the remains of his own lunch.
Until now, most of their rides on Tene's back had been within the empire. The farthest they'd gone was the elves' Great Forest, which had taken a little over an hour and a half.
The Obina Empire sat on a continent that, by Earth's reckoning, lay just above the equator. The Evergarden Territory was positioned a little south of the empire's heart. The dwarven nation, however, lay beyond the empire's northernmost edge—so a longer journey was inevitable.
Before they knew it, lunchtime had arrived, and Freya's carefully prepared boxed lunches were being opened on Tene's back.
"I wanted lunch too…"
While the three of them happily ate their sandwiches, Tene—still carrying them through the sky—grumbled telepathically, her voice thick with sulking.
"Hey, hey, we saved some for you! You can eat it nice and slow later."
"…Hmph. Fine. I suppose I have no choice."
Knowing full well how hard Tene was working, Rosaria laid a hand on her back and stroked her gently.
"You set some aside?"
"No—I left it in the basket over there?"
"Huh? There's nothing there."
"Huh?"
Felix, mid-meal, shot Rosaria a look that said he had no idea what she was talking about. The two of them tilted their heads in mutual confusion.
"Louis? Is there any sandwich left in ther—"
Then Rosaria spotted Louis still clutching the basket, chewing away at something, and started to ask—
"*Mmph*—thish ish sho good!"
"……I'll buy you some later."
"Excuse me!?"
—and promptly turned away, stroking Tene's back even more tenderly as she whispered sweet nothings.
The northern lands were locked in winter year-round—a place known as the White Earth. Snow that fell in winter never melted, even when spring came, so the ground stayed buried under white forever.
"Wow… I never thought I'd see a sight like this again after I got discharged…"
With every step, Rosaria's boots sank deep into the snow with a soft crunch. She stared out over the endless white slopes below with a hollow look. Forests of pine and fir blanketed in pure white looked uncomfortably like the parade ground she'd once sprinted toward, snow shovel in hand, without so much as a morning roll call—and something like old trauma tried to claw its way up from the back of her mind.
"Still, magic really is something else, isn't it? Back when I was serving, I used to layer on so many clothes I looked like a walking snowball and I was still freezing. Never thought I'd be walking around in short sleeves again."
Even so, Louis strode along in ordinary clothes without a single piece of cold-weather gear, rubbing at the thin film coating his body as he muttered. It was a spell of his own devising—an application of the invisibility membrane used to hide Tene's true form. A thin film wrapped around each of them and held a steady, comfortable warmth. Thanks to it, they could climb the northern mountains—where even waterfalls froze solid—without feeling a hint of cold.
"See? Magic really is amazing, right?"
Felix shrugged and lifted his chin with a smug little smile at Louis's reaction.
"So when are we actually getting there? And if we're going to the dwarven country, why are we climbing a mountain in the first place?"
From behind them, Tene trudged along, cheeks puffed out so round that anyone could tell she was thoroughly displeased. A girl who loved food more than anything had gone hours without lunch while flying nonstop—her mood was spiking in every direction.
"I said I was sorry… I'll treat you later, okay?"
"You mean it?"
"Yeah! I'll feed you till you're stuffed!"
Louis, the culprit behind it all, scratched his head awkwardly and did his best to soothe her temper.
"All right! Let's hurry!"
Cheered up again by Louis's promise, Tene hummed a little tune and stomped cheerfully ahead.
"You sure you can handle that?"
"Handle what?"
"She's a dragon. Can your wallet handle it?"
"Ahaha!..........Wait."
Watching from a short distance, Rosaria sidled up and asked. Louis answered without thinking—then his face went rigid. He frantically yanked open the coin purse at his belt.
"........Hey, hang on! I barely have any money!!!"
"You promised!!!"
Louis bolted after Tene with a look of pure horror.
"Why is it that the smart ones are always so stupid about the weirdest things…"
Rosaria shook her head in pity as Louis dropped to his knees in the snow, clutching Tene's hem and begging through tears. Felix, Louis, Rachel—every one of the clever people she knew had a screw loose somewhere.
"This is the entrance?"
They kept climbing, and when the party finally reached the summit, Rosaria stretched out a hand and asked, looking thoroughly unimpressed. Even while flying on Tene's back, Louis had been their guide—and from the moment a bare snow-covered peak had appeared at the end of his directions, something had felt off. Now that they'd followed the path all the way up, the summit that greeted them was completely empty and windswept.
"That's right."
Even under Rosaria's demand for an explanation, Louis just nodded, unbothered.
"A mountaintop with nothing on it—nothing but that one rock—and you're saying that's the entrance to the dwarven nation?"
"You said it yourself."
"Said what…? Nothing but a single rock on an empty summit…? So what?"
"Just watch."
Still completely lost, Rosaria watched as Louis calmly set down the pack he'd been carrying on his back and blew out a breath through his nose.
"Let's see… was it in here? No—here, maybe…? Where did I put it…?"
"Ah! Found it!"
After rummaging through the bag for a while, Louis pulled out a medal small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.
"That's… the dwarven crest, isn't it?"
The moment Louis held it up, Felix recognized the design engraved on it. On one side was a hammer, on the other a pair of tongs, crossed in an X; behind them rose a surge of flame. It was a crest that captured the dwarves' deepest belief—that a blacksmith's forge was the root of who they were, so much so that "dwarf" and "blacksmith" had been synonyms since ancient times.
"Take a look under your feet."
"Under my feet? Huh? Was this always here?"
Louis gestured to Rosaria, who had been leaning against the rock. She looked down and found a groove right at her toes—a rounded hollow that looked as if it had been made for exactly the medal in Louis's hand.
"…You're kidding."
"I'm not kidding."
Louis stepped up to the rock and fitted the medal precisely into the groove.
And then—
BOOM—
"Ugh!?"
"Th-the ground just shook!"
The earth rumbled as if an earthquake had struck. All three of them staggered and cried out. When they looked ahead, something astonishing was happening.
Rrrrumble—
"L-look over there!"
What they had taken for nothing more than a large boulder began to move on its own. Space opened beneath it—a structure like a secret base. Once the gap was wide enough for two or three people to pass through, the rumbling finally stopped and the rock went still.
"All right. In we go."
"You could've said something sooner! You scared me half to death."
"If I told you ahead of time, it wouldn't be any fun."
"…Okay, fair."
Louis straightened up and headed for the opening first, wearing the bright, mischievous smile of a born troublemaker.
"Stairs?"
The others followed him under the rock. The interior was dim without any light of its own, but it was still around midday, and the bright sun outside was enough to let them see. Stairs dropped about the height of a single apartment floor, opening into a space a little tighter than a studio flat. They followed Louis's long strides down and set foot on level ground.
Rrrrumble—
"Wh-what now!?"
"Nothing special. The door closes automatically once everyone's inside."
The moment all four of them were below, the ground shook again just as it had when the hidden space first opened. The massive rock slid back into place.
"I can't see a thing."
"Should I cast Light?"
When the vibration stopped, the rock sealing the entrance left them in pitch darkness—unable to see an inch ahead.
"No. Wait."
Felix had already raised his staff to secure some visibility, but Louis stopped him before he could cast.
Then—
Huummm—
"Huh? There's light coming in."
"Finally, I can see."
Gems set into the ceiling of the little chamber began to glow with a soft radiance, and their vision cleared.
"So what do we do n—"
BOOM—
"Wha—!?"
"Would you stop already!!"
The light was back, but they were still trapped in a cramped, sealed room. Felix had been about to ask Louis what came next when the floor started shaking again—and Rosaria finally lost her patience.
But then—
"The floor's… moving?"
"Some kind of elevator structure?"
The floor beneath them began to sink, slowly and steadily. It felt like riding an elevator after the doors had closed. Only the platform they stood on moved; the earthen layers of the shaft slid past as they descended.
How long they rode, none of them could say.
Whoosh—
"Ugh! The heat!"
"It's so bright!"
Without warning the walls vanished and brilliant light flooded in. Rosaria and Felix threw up their hands on reflex.
"Oh—wow!! Everyone, look over there!!!"
Tene, whose body was far tougher than either of theirs, didn't flinch. While their vision was still blocked, she took in the vista unfolding before them and shouted in pure awe.
"Argh, my eyes—what the hell is—……whoa. Holy crap."
"Good heavens…"
Blinking hard until their sight returned, Rosaria and Felix looked around exactly as Tene had urged—and their jaws dropped.
It was like the underground bunkers from a nuclear-apocalypse game, only vastly larger. No sunlight reached this deep, yet the immense space was brilliantly lit—every surface studded with luminous stones. The height and scale were staggering, and descending from above gave them a perfect view of the whole interior.
Cutting through the center of the vast circular chamber was not a river of water, but a current of something—lava or molten metal—so fiercely hot that even from a distance the heat rolled off it in waves. It seethed and frothed, glowing red-hot to the point of near-white. Buildings clustered thick along both banks of that molten river. Smoke rose from every one of them in steady puffs, and from high above the figures moving between them looked like ants—until a closer look revealed bearded dwarves hurrying this way and that, arms laden with goods.
"This is the nation of the dwarves. Karak-Zar."
A mountain of flame and a fortress, nestled beneath the cold lands of death.
Karak-Zar.
It was the first time any of them had laid eyes on the nation—and the fortress—of the dwarves.