The Roof of the Earth
Only two days ago, this silence would have felt perfectly familiar. Now, for reasons I couldn't name, it grated.
Tsk. Irritating woman.
Annoyance at her rose unbidden and cracked the quiet clean through.
Enough. Lingering here would only sour me further.
I left the cave, flew to the gate, and stepped straight through into the passage linked to the griffin's gate. Stale air met me on the other side. Compared to the air inside a gate, the stuff out here was foul.
I still hadn't settled on a destination. Somewhere cool and clean, though — somewhere that might wash this unpleasant mood off me — didn't sound half bad. A suitable place came to mind, and I beat my wings hard and climbed.
The longer I flew, the more I appreciated these scales. Like the skin of a stealth aircraft, they sheared the air and swallowed every whisper of drag, so I made no sound at all. So long as I was careful not to leak mana, I could go wherever I pleased without those insignificant insects getting in my way.
Having devoured Hyeonmu and the griffin, I flew at a speed that belonged to an entirely different realm from my first flight, and I took my time with the night. It was a beautiful view. The landscape itself pleased me, and the small buildings far below sat against the wild in a harmony that was not unpleasant. Sightseeing cost me a little time, but I still reached my destination without being truly late.
"So this is Mount Everest. A vista worthy of the roof of the world, I'll grant it that."
What filled my sight was an endless procession of snow-laden peaks. At the highest point, the summit of Mount Everest burned silver beneath the sun. Nothing I had ever seen could match that grandeur.
I folded my wings slowly and descended toward the summit. Cold air packed my lungs, and in the stillness the wind spoke loud enough to stir something in me. For a moment, looking down over the world spread beneath the snow, I had nothing to say.
"It would make a fine retreat."
The true summit was more than my weight could ask of it, but the mid-slope looked as if it might bear me well enough. I settled there and was savoring the cold and that world of unbroken white when the ground began to shudder. Snow and stone trembled. Enormous footsteps drew near.
I turned toward the sound, and found an amusing toy waiting.
Judging by size alone, it might have been my match — a bear sheathed in fur the color of frozen ice, teeth bared, a growl rolling out of its chest.
"You show yourself only now? I nearly died of waiting."
"Grrrrrrrr...!"
In place of an answer to so light a greeting, it flashed claws longer than half its own forearm and lunged. Heavy as it was, it closed the distance with surprising speed and swung at once. Those claws, loaded with brute force, were not unworthy of the word lethal.
I caught the reaching forepaw in my tail and crushed it shut.
KRRRSH—!
Muscle tore and twisted in the bear's foreleg. Red drops ran down my tail, one after another.
"GWAAAAAK!"
"What's the matter? Don't tell me you're already tucking your tail to run."
"Still lacking. Put your back into it."
I hauled on the foreleg with my tail, dragged the retreating bear back in, and raked its face with my claws.
CRACK!
Half its face tore away. Blood fountained. Only then, as if it finally understood it would not leave this place unless it killed me, did the thing begin to thrash in earnest.
"KUWAAAAAAK!"
"Ha! Yes. That's it. Harder."
It slammed its free forepaw into the one caught in my tail, sheared the trapped limb off, and fell back. In the single eye that remained, desperation, urgency, and the will to fight had taken root.
Now, perhaps, I can enjoy this a little.
Cold from Mount Everest itself coiled around the beast as it opened the distance, gathering over the ruined arm and the ruined face.
"Hm?"
Where the cold had pooled, ice rose in the shape of an arm and a forepaw — and shattered at once.
"A rather curious ability you have."
Watching the face and the forepaw knit themselves whole as the ice broke, I judged that nothing short of ripping out the head or the heart would finish it. But that would be far too simple.
"KWAAAAAAK!"
It roared as if victory already belonged to it, and charged. Wrapped in cold, it came on at a speed that made everything before look like a crawl, and struck my face with a forepaw as though to pay the debt in full.
BOOOOM—!
A concussion that shook the whole mountain rolled out, and something like a bomb of pure cold detonated against me.
"Well. That rather kills the mood."
Curious how much stronger it had grown, I had taken the blow as it came. It failed to leave so much as a tremor, let alone a wound.
"If this is all you amount to, I've wasted my time."
The heat that had been rising in me went cold. The lift of battle collapsed all at once. The bear was still growling, still failing to grasp the situation, so I clubbed its head with my tail.
"Kek—!"
Its head dropped. A mouthful of blood burst from nose and mouth, and it stared up at me in bewilderment.
"I have no further business with the likes of you."
"Kekek... kekeek..."
I cinched my tail around its throat and hauled it up. Claws, fangs, and jaws all went to work at once, biting and hammering at the tail in a furious struggle. It meant very little.
I shut my mouth and drew the fire raging in my core up through my throat, into the hollow of my jaws, until flame seeped between my scales. Mana and fire poured from my heart together and turned the air around us to killing heat. Every scrap of nearby snow flashed to steam. The ground under my feet melted until I could no longer stand without flying.
Fire caught in the beast's fur. The fight in its eyes curdled, almost at once, into terror and despair.
A mass of heat and mana packed my mouth. I drew a breath, and on the exhale I loosed my Breath.
KRA-KA-KA-KOOM—!!
A lance of heat so fierce it might have been mistaken for the sun tore from my jaws and swallowed the creature wrapped in my tail, every inch of it. Ash whirled. The stink of char shook the mountain. That single Breath melted whole ridges, and the mid-slope where I had been resting ran like lava, stone boiling down the face.
"So much for the vacation."
I had rather liked the place. Seeing it reduced to a scorched waste stirred a faint regret, but what was already burned was already burned. This Earth still had playground enough to offer me.
I smacked my lips and was about to leave for somewhere else when something snagged my mana sense.
"Well. You were a more interesting fellow than I thought."
"Grrrrrrk!"
I turned, and the thing my Breath had reduced to ash was standing in front of me again.
How did a dead thing come back? Worse, the cold coiling around it had grown a full degree sharper. Resurrection was a domain even Hyeonmu — the one said to herald death — had never touched.
I focused mana into my eyes and my nose. A dragon's sight and hearing can pierce straight through to an opponent's essence.
"That body of yours is not the true one."
No wonder the mana running through it had been so pathetic beside the toughness of the flesh. What stood there was a split-body, tethered to a main form. The moment I folded the scent of the surroundings together with the scent of the beast itself, the conclusion settled.
"This entire range is your true body."
"KWAAAAK!"
That explained it. For a gate break, I had felt no monsters nearby at all — because the gate had never broken. From the beginning, the whole mountain range was the gate, and the boss.
"To kill you, I'll have to blow this entire range away."
It came at me in desperation, as if everything until now had been play, sheathing its whole body in cold like armor and swinging claws braided with frost and mana. I knocked the flying slash aside with a tail wreathed in flame. The heavy shock that traveled up the tail was proof enough that the thing was fighting for its life.
"KUAAAAAK!"
It clung, and at last it got hold of me.
"Grrrk!"
As if it meant never to let go, it locked onto my body and dragged every scrap of cold it had, trying to freeze me solid.
"...Don't let go."
"KWAAAAK?!"
So it could not fall away, I drove tail and claws into its back and flank and rose.
"I told you not to let go!"
As the altitude climbed, it seemed at last to understand that something had gone wrong, and it tried to tear free.
"For a fake body, you certainly know how to act."
Would a dragon's flesh endure cosmic radiation, and the absence of air? My body, which had felt as if it might climb forever, stopped.
Black space filled my eyes. A great moon hung there. I could not breathe. They say an ordinary human, naked to the void, can last perhaps thirty seconds. As if to prove the point, the thing latched to me thrashed in panic at the airlessness — and before long, it stopped.
I glanced sidelong at the limp body, suffocated, and took stock of myself. I certainly could not breathe. I did not, however, feel as if I were about to die. Instinct stirred: stay here long enough, and I would adapt even to this. But there was something I had to finish first.
I swung my tail, pointed my head at the world below, and beat my wings with everything I had. Sound does not carry in the void, but on the ground it would have been the report of a bursting shell. I dropped toward Earth at terrible speed, wrapping myself in mana and flame. For the first time, the friction laid a real burden on my body.
Flame and mana swelled and laid themselves over me until they took the shape of an enormous dragon.
".........!"
Its throat must already have been burned out; it could not even scream. It stared down at the Everest range — its own true body — with eyes gone dull with resignation.
.........................!!!!!
A shockwave and a fire so vast that sound itself seemed to fall away behind them burst across the world, and Mount Everest — the highest mountain on Earth, the roof of the world — vanished as if it had never stood there at all.