The Uninvited Guest of Fire (1)
The volcano had collapsed.
At a sentence so utterly beyond imagining, I could barely force my mouth open.
"Is that... even possible?"
It was a mountain that had stood tall for nearly a thousand years.
"Don't tell me it was the earthquake that struck yesterday morning?"
— No, it's the other way around. The ground shook because it collapsed.
The Western Border's chief officer had spoken before the Director of Intelligence could.
— It's an event that should never, under any circumstances, have occurred. The active volcano is, quite literally, the symbol of the West.
Behind his grave expression, the chaos of the Western Border office flickered into view — twice, three times the crowd we dealt with down south.
— But the refugees fleeing into our kingdom keep repeating the same story.
Padre Montes's tense voice carried through the crystal orb.
— They say they heard a dragon wailing.
"A d-dragon!?"
A name no one had expected came tumbling out of nowhere.
— ...Why would the ancestors' kind—
Dhin Askyrin, the dragonewt, frowned deeply.
The Eastern Border's chief — a wind spirit — was the only one to tilt her head and ask, — Weren't dragons already extinct?
— Most of them are gone, yes. But a few still remain. One of them is the Red Dragon known as the 'Master of the Volcano.' She has grown old, but she lives still.
"Good heavens — a dragon..."
A name given in the age of myth, when people feared it as a force of nature — and a creature that was, in truth, a calamity-grade threat.
I never imagined I would hear it spoken here.
Then a single ominous thought flashed through my mind.
"Senior, if that's the case, then don't tell me..."
— The situation is one of two things.
Padre said, his face gone stiff.
— Something has happened to the Master of the Volcano.
"..."
No one could find their voice.
A calamity had befallen a dragon.
It was as if one of the world's own laws had been bent out of shape — for since the age of myth, dragons had symbolized nature itself.
But what came next was more shocking still.
— Or else she has raged so ferociously that she brought down her own nest and everything it stood upon.
Kwarurung! KWAAANG!
Rock, ash, and molten lava sprayed in every direction. The sky was swallowed by clouds seared black, and the acrid stench of sulfur thickened the trembling air.
Apocalypse. The world as it looks when everything is coming apart — spread out across the Western Volcano Region.
And beneath it all, a wounded, furious dragon raised her voice in a wail.
"I will kill every last one of you! I swear upon the lava below and the flames above — I will devour you all, and not one of you will be left breathing!!!"
Her vast, outspread wings hung in tatters like a torn tent. Her scales, though dulled, had once been hard as armor — now they were split here and there, blood seeping from the cracks.
Kagak! KWADDEDEUK!
Her claws tore wildly into the collapsed mountain. Menassil's red eyes swept the ruins with savage hunger. Not a trace remained of the lazy, gentle creature she had been. In its place, she was ransacking the primordial mountain — a mountain she had brought down with her own hands in desperation to find something — like a creature gone mad.
"Insufferable vermin! Tearing you limb from limb would be mercy too kind!!"
Each time her wings beat in frenzy, scalding blood sprayed in every direction.
Chi-ik...
Drops that struck the ground burned straight through the rock, hissing up plumes of smoke.
And then, at last—
"U-uaaagh!! Help me, please, help me!!"
A survivor buried in the ash revealed himself — a man with one arm already crushed beneath the rock. Realizing he could not run, he wept and pleaded with the dragon.
"O g-great Dragon! Master of the Volcano! I have sinned! I only followed the dragon hunters — that is all! I beg you, show mercy...!"
But the moment Menassil laid eyes on him, she drew in the deepest breath she could manage.
"No, no, no, no!!!"
And with everything she had, she breathed her hatred out over the wretched human.
FWAAAAAK!
"GAAAAAAGH!!!"
A scream rang out through the roaring inferno — then cut short.
When the dragon's breath had passed, all that remained was a human shape charred jet black.
Kwajik! Eudeudeuk!
Menassil seized it in her teeth without hesitation and tore it apart — so violently that not even its form survived.
And yet the dragon's fury would not settle.
"Dragon hunter...!!! I know you hide somewhere in this place!"
The dragon hunter.
She hunted the man who wore that arrogant name like a medal of honor — the man who had slain her kin, stealing his strike by mere moments before her kinsman's strength was spent, and who now pursued his own prey as though it were his life's work.
He had committed the taboo above all taboos.
Not the sanctified body. Not the flesh. He had set his sights upon the egg.
It was nothing less than a dreadful curse — an attempt to end a species' bloodline forever.
And the dragon hunter had not stopped there.
When the cursed mithril arrow had torn through her wing, she remembered what he had said.
'We will rule over you.'
Rule.
'His purpose was never simply to shatter me and my egg.'
Menassil had seen it burning in those greedy eyes — the ambition to set an entire species beneath his heel.
And so, in her rage, she had gathered the last of her strength and unleashed the final Dragon Word.
The one power in the world capable of bending its laws.
The Dragon Word.
"Immoreta Dehin Turkashai!"
⟨ The Primordial Mountain Shall Bury You All! ⟩
With that single utterance, the vermin calling themselves an 'expedition' were all swept away — buried beneath volcanic ash and stone.
But it was not enough.
'I cannot leave that man alive.'
Dead or not, she had to find his corpse, make an example of it — show the world so thoroughly that no one would ever dare entertain such a thought again.
Desire is a plague.
Unless you tear it out by the root, it spreads to others, growing ever larger before it returns.
Menassil shook her body hard, then reached her claws down once more toward the expedition members surely still buried beneath the rubble.
No — in that very instant.
"Khak...!"
Blood suddenly burst from her mouth in spatters.
"Kkh... uuugh...!!"
Pain followed — a pain like her whole body being torn apart. Slowly, she lowered her head and looked down at her own chest.
Flash.
Pristine white mithril gleamed, obscene against her red scales. An arrowhead forged from the hardest metal in the world had split her skin and buried itself deep in her breast.
"..."
It had been a contemptible human's attack — but the dragon hunter's weapons were made from the corpses of her own kin. A single strike of mithril and dragon claw had pierced her scales with terrible ease.
Tuk. Tuk.
Menassil stared with hollow eyes at the blood streaming from her wound and her lips.
Then—
[Menassil. Master of the Volcano.]
The fire spirits emerged from behind a lone boulder — the only thing in all that ruin the landslide had not swallowed.
The dragon whirled her head around and demanded, "The egg — is the egg safe!?"
And there it was, coming into view — the egg, wholly unharmed. Relief finally spread across Menassil's face.
"Thank the flames... thank the flames..."
Forgetting her pain, she stroked the egg with trembling tenderness. The spirits had given their everything to shield it. While she crushed and shattered more than a hundred humans, these two friends had held fast, bodies and all, and kept it safe.
"You have shown me a kindness beyond all words. Were you not my friends already, I would owe you a debt I must repay."
[It is nothing. As your guests, we only did what guests ought.]
"Wait but a little. Once I have put every one of those vermin to death, I will raise a new nest, and—"
[No. Stop.]
At the unexpected reply, Menassil's head snapped around. And seeing the color of their flames, she recoiled in shock.
Purple.
Not their usual gentle orange. Not the blue of their fury.
The purple of grief.
"What nonsense is this? Stop? Did you not see it!? Only by killing every last one of them can I leave no seed of calamity behind!"
[This place is no longer safe for your descendants. And — friend — your flame is guttering.]
"All the more reason I cannot let them live!"
[A flame dies at the smallest wind, the slightest rain. It needs somewhere safer. This place is not that place. Friend — what do your own eyes tell you?]
"..."
Menassil could not answer. Instead, she slowly looked around her.
Kugugugung...
Once, there had been no place in all the world where the power of fire ran stronger, or harder to reach. Cliffs carved sheer and walls of molten lava — a fortress given by heaven itself.
But not anymore.
The mountain had fallen.
And soon, the whole world would know it. They would know what had befallen the Master of the Volcano.
Worse — having spent her final Dragon Word, all the strength remaining to her now was a single ember, smaller even than the stub of a dying candle.
An aged dragon, drained to the last. Wounded on top of that, with an egg left in her keeping.
What would happen when the world learned of this?
'We will rule over you.'
Nature does not spare the weak. And humans never let an opportunity pass — the opportunity called desire.
"...You are telling me to leave."
Her rage slowly ebbed. In the end, the very reason she had raged this far was that her descendant stood in danger. This egg, at least, she had to protect — even if it cost her everything.
"But where to?"
Where in the world was safe?
The first thing that came to mind was her own kind.
'If there is anyone I can trust, it is them alone.'
Then how many of her kind remained? She reached into memories from the far distant past.
'The Frost Dragon of the north already died of time itself. And humans took her name for their own.'
'The dragons of the south descended into the sea, swearing never to set foot on land again.'
'The wingless dragons of the east rose into the sky and became, quite literally, nature itself.'
None.
Menassil sighed at the cold, unflinching reality.
"There is no one left to lean upon..."
The timing could not have been worse. In all the world now, only she and this egg remained of dragonkind.
Had she been a hundred years younger, vermin like these would never have left so much as a scratch on her. The wound the mithril had dealt her would have healed in a heartbeat, mended by the power her heart poured out.
But now, all of it was beyond her.
She was isolated now.
Not the proud solitude she had once savored — standing alone at the summit of the strong — but the isolation of the weak, watched from every direction by hungry eyes.
"You speak truly. This place... is no longer safe."
She had to go. She had to leave this place where she had dwelt for a thousand years. Not for her own sake — for the egg's.
Fwaak.
Forcing her torn wings open, she lowered her body with painstaking care.
"Climb aboard. I cannot say how long this body of mine will hold, but we will be faster than walking."
[Where will you go?]
"..."
Menassil fell silent for a while — for never once in her life had she imagined making her home anywhere but here.
'Could any creature exist that would not covet this egg?'
A dragon's body — a chance to seize legendary fame and untold riches in a single stroke. What being in this world would refuse it? Not only humans; every race would want that power. Those hungry for the name 'Dragonslayer' blanketed heaven and earth.
Then a story the fire spirits had once told her surfaced in her mind.
The Crossline Kingdom.
Where line upon line crossed and collided.
And there dwelt the most peculiar human of them all.
At last, Menassil made her decision.
"...Guide me to the one called the Central Officer."
Was this truly the right choice — fleeing humans, only to go to a human?
But she had no leisure to weigh it calmly. The time that had already been running short was now devouring her very heart.
Throb.
The mithril arrowhead lodged deep in her breast was slowly creeping toward its mark. And the blood seeping from wounds across her body was stealing away her warmth of life, little by little.
"Choice, for me, is a luxury I no longer possess... So I can only pray that this path proves the right one."
For the first time in her life, surrendering herself not to conviction but to fate itself—
Flap.
The dragon rose into the sky.