Have You Returned Safely?
So how does a wench like you mean to keep me safe? Have you even the mettle to follow where I go?
"I may not look it, but I do hold a certain voice in the affairs of the world."
"I mean to have you struck from the rolls of monsters and entered instead as a guardian deity."
She delivered it without a single hitch, so she had thought this through after all. Then, as if she had given up on rising on those unsteady legs, she simply knelt where she was and settled herself with quiet propriety.
I bore down on her with mana and made the threat plain, yet whatever pleased her so, she only smiled and answered that she understood.
I could not make sense of the woman at all.
Since matters had come to this, a little rest seemed no bad thing. I coiled myself and settled where I lay. The cave had swollen along with the Gate after I devoured the griffin and Hyeonmu, and now even with my neck stretched to its limit my head no longer brushed the stone. Seeing me draw in my presence and rest, the women clustered and began murmuring among themselves. I had no interest in listening, so I shut my hearing.
Come to think of it, this was the first time anyone had remained at my side since I became a dragon.
Watching the red dragon close his eyes and slip into sleep, I set out the things I had brought and fashioned a small altar. The gods had taught me that place mattered, but what mattered most was the heart that offered the prayer. I knelt before the altar, closed my eyes, and pressed my palms together.
My lord, I have met the red dragon of whom You spoke.
I had meant only to make that report and rest a while, when a sudden warmth wrapped around me and the sweet scent of cherry blossoms rose.
"What is this...?"
"I had a few words for you, so I called you here."
"Are you... a god?"
Her form would not come fully clear, yet a woman stood there wrapped in a kimono that seemed woven from threads of gold itself.
"My bond with you is not yet complete, so I cannot show myself in full. In a place this thick with mana, though, I can be called forth for a little while."
"I am still too unripe to know which god you are."
"I am Amaterasu. Worry not, child. Ere long you shall call not only me, but every god, into the mortal world, and remain perfectly well."
Amaterasu's hand, stroking me as though I were her own precious daughter, seemed to soothe my very soul.
"Lady Amaterasu, I cannot begin to understand how I am meant to attend that red dragon."
Protecting him — that, somehow, I could manage. But the gods' command to serve at his side had left me with nothing but questions. Hearing me, Amaterasu reached out and drew me into her arms.
"I am not asking anything so grand of you. Only hold him now and then, as I am holding you, and speak to him often. That will be enough."
In that warm embrace there was a softness that felt as though it could shield me from anything in the world, and my eyes closed of their own accord.
"Worry not. You are already doing well enough."
With the warmth still lingering against my hair, I returned to the waking world.
"My lady, are you all right?"
Ayana and Yuki were watching me with open worry, and I realized I must have been with the goddess for quite some time.
"There is no need for concern. I was only speaking with a god for a moment."
"That's a relief, my lady. But are you really okay? The second we got to Korea you burned through all your mana looking for the dragon, and you even took a blast of fire."
Just as Yuki said, I had spent mana and stamina to their limits — a body that ought to have needed at least three days of convalescence — and yet I was strangely whole. No. I was brimming with more vigor than usual. After a moment's thought, something clicked. Perhaps Amaterasu had done something for me when she held me. More than that, a fragrance like a warm spring day still clung to my skin.
"It seems the goddess lent me her aid."
"Oh! That's our shrine maiden. The gods really do dote on you."
"I can only be endlessly grateful for an affection I do not deserve."
Yuki asked, half in jest, to be taught the method — she wanted a little of the gods' attention for herself.
"If there is a method, I know nothing beyond offering prayer every day."
Yuki gave it up at once — of course it would be that — and began pulling something from the luggage they had brought. I watched her work at it so earnestly and found it was a cushion, just the right size to sit on. She had compressed it so tightly it was no bigger than a baseball; she unfolded it and held it out.
"Like it or not, we're going to be here a good while. Sitting on bare stone gets miserable."
"Then I will accept it with thanks."
"I'll gratefully make use of one as well."
Once I sat upon it, the comfort was of an entirely different order from the bare ground.
"So, my lady, what's the plan from here?"
"I am sorry, but I do not know either. The goddess told me to speak to him often, and to hold him, but..."
Everyone present knew just how high a bar that was. They only let out uneasy sounds, and no ready answer came.
"Still, attending him or not, we can't just stay here forever."
"That is true. We are hunters, so we endure harsh places better than ordinary people, but that does not mean we can endure with nothing at all."
As the two of them said, this place was literally empty. There was nothing. It would have been stranger, really, for a dragon to have stockpiled the things a human life required. And yet it was more surprising still that he had filled his dwelling with nothing whatsoever. When dragons emerged from Gates in other countries, most of them hoarded something in the nest. That was supposed to be the nature of the species, and this one had set aside not a single thing.
Wondering why, I turned to look at him and found he had already closed his eyes and fallen asleep.
"No matter how I look at him, he's terrifying."
"He is, isn't he. Next to that, an S-Rank Gate boss looks like nothing more than a mischievous child."
Yuki and Ayana each offered their own impression as they gazed at the dragon. His appearance was frightening, certainly. The moment those eyes met yours, the body locked and the breath caught hard in the throat. But he could be spoken with, and in the end he had permitted them at his side. He did not seem as savage as he looked.
I rose and approached him. Behind me the two of them called out to stop me, but — I was sorry — I pretended not to hear and went on. Up close, the pressure of that form was even greater.
"If I hold him like this... will it do?"
Hoping the warmth I had felt in Amaterasu's arms might reach the sleeping dragon as well, I gently gathered his lower jaw into my embrace. I had worried the scales would be sharp and hot enough to ruin my clothes, but what I felt against me was, unexpectedly, a warmth and a softness that seemed exactly right.
You have such a warm body...
The heat loosened my tension of its own accord. I held him a little tighter and leaned my body in.
I opened my eyes to find that woman hugging my jaw and nuzzling against me.
I had no idea how this had come to pass. I had closed only my hearing. Every other sense I had left properly open. And I had failed to notice her coming this close? I possessed an instinct and a range of perception that caught even a concealed monster the instant it tried to draw near. That I had not noticed a human woman approaching was absurd. More likely, some alien power unlike the mana I sensed from her now had intervened.
A curious woman.
A dragon's eyes can grasp everything about another — whether they are ill, the placement of the organs within, the flow of mana, even emotion and thought. And yet the woman before me truly held no particular scheme, and no malice. All I could read from her was that my jaw was warm, and she wanted to keep holding it.
Call it composure or call it nerve. A moment ago she had faced me shaking, and now she was rubbing her head against my body without a shred of hesitation.
"......!"
Only then did she realize I was awake. She stopped her nuzzling, drew back, and folded her hands with perfect courtesy, as if none of it had ever happened.
"Ahem... ahem. It is nothing."
She stole a glance at my jaw, plainly regretting that I had woken, and she no longer seemed afraid at all. How did anyone adapt that quickly? She might as well have become a different person.
"Yes. Go carefully, and return safely."
I left the woman behind her, bent deep at the waist in a bow, spread my wings, and headed out.
Go carefully, and return safely...
How long had it been since anyone had greeted me like that? I shook off the odd, ticklish feeling and flew out beyond the Gate. There was no one nearby worth a real fight, but Gates enough to take the edge off my hunger lay scattered all around. I entered a suitable one, devoured its boss, eased the hunger, felt the Gate collapse, and came back.
The woman who had been nodding off against the wall seemed to sense my arrival. She rose at once, bent at the waist just as before, and offered her greeting.
"Welcome home. Have you returned safely?"
The perfectly ordinary way she said it drew a dry laugh out of me.