The Role of a Guardian Dragon
"Mmm... haaah..."
I woke without a sound and pushed myself upright, still wrapped in Polymorph. Something was stirring outside — the noise was too much for an ordinary morning — so I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and started off, slow and careful.
"What could possibly be making such a racket...?"
This was the snowfield of northern Kartz, a wilderness beyond human borders, the domain of monsters and wild beasts. People came here only now and then, to gather materials or cull monsters, so the uproar could hardly have been anything humans had raised.
I let Polymorph fall away and set out across the snow one step at a time, turning to take in my surroundings. The day was gloomy, a thin fog clinging to the ground, but a dragon's eyes saw far more keenly than any human's, and the world beyond the mist lay clear before me.
Heat Detection
Borrow a little magic, and I could survey the area in a vision not unlike what the modern world would call a thermal scope. I had not been born to this land. I had lived a modern life and come here afterward, and because of that my imagination outstripped anyone else's. Wound together with Mircania's formidable intellect and gift for magic, that imagination let me shape spells more efficient, and more useful, than the original Mircania had ever wielded.
...Nothing nearby that I can see right now. Then it's probably the forest, a little ways off.
A heavy boom rolled across the snow. I was drawing near the lake when the sound came again, and I spread my wings wide, fixing my gaze on the trees.
...Hm.
"Kraaa!"
"Krrr..."
Wondering what all the fuss was, I lowered my head and watched more closely. A small territorial dispute seemed to be underway in the woods — lizardmen on one side, and werewolves on the other, if I wasn't mistaken.
Neither race was the sort you could dismiss as weak, and a squabble over territory gave me no particular reason to intervene. To be frank, if I simply went over there I could sweep the lot of them away in an instant. But then those monsters would have been in the middle of their own little turf war, only for some dragon to barge in and snuff their lives out for nothing. They would die bewildered, and that felt needlessly cruel. So, as a very small mercy, I decided to do nothing but watch.
Looked at another way, someone out there was running a small-scale war simulator, and I was getting the show for free. Hard to complain about that.
Haaahm...
Even so, they weren't fighting with the savagery I had expected. They kept hesitating, testing one another, and the whole affair was dreadfully dull.
Can't they just commit and fight...? So monsters aren't entirely without intelligence after all.
In the game I would have strolled past and flicked a spell at anything that annoyed me. Here, they were not scraps of data. Killing them with my own claws carried a prickle of guilt, and yet simply watching was its own kind of boredom. How to put it — the sight was dull enough that a yawn rose in me of its own accord, and still I had no thought of lifting a claw. A thoroughly contradictory state of mind.
"Over there! Hurry — follow me!"
"Once we're clear of the forest, we'll be fine!"
...Hm?
"Krrrr!"
Voices rose from the left, and in the same moment the lizardmen's eyes swung toward the humans. I rose without a sound.
"Brother! Lizardmen — you still got any fight left in you?"
"Damn it all... Run, and don't dawdle! We'll have to break out onto the snowfield and fight where there's room. What else is there!"
A voice I half recognized, a face buried in a thick beard, a heavy, solid frame. The very same men I had seen at the guild two days ago. I kept my attention on them.
My role, after all, was guardian dragon of the north. I rarely showed myself, but I was not the sort to watch something unfold before my eyes and simply let it pass. Driving back the monster waves that pressed in on humankind was part of that role, and a handful of monsters was nothing to fear.
Distance... about seven hundred meters?
I spread my wings with a soft beat and flew quietly toward what lay ahead.
A sharp clang rang out.
"We drove them off for now! No telling how many more are coming, so grab this and let's run!"
"Aish — I finally pick up a chunk of crystal after all this time, and of course my luck turns rotten!"
So they had been gathering crystals and blundered into the lizardmen's territory. Their words didn't spell out every detail, but the circumstances suggested they had gone into that forest to survey it. Lizardmen were cunning. They seemed to have a habit of striking not when prey entered their domain, but when it tried to leave. Otherwise there was no explaining why they would wage a staring contest with the werewolves and watch their own backs at the same time.
But I was a dragon, wasn't I? What could a mere lizardman do to me?
"Krru..."
"Th-this is insane... why is there a dragon here..."
I set a foot down softly and began to advance, one unhurried step after another.
"Brother, are we... actually going to get out of this alive?"
...Shall I tease them a little?
I made a show of passing before them with perfect indifference, then turned my eyes down and to the left, to where they stood beside my foreleg.
"...I-I think it's looking at us."
"Isn't there some way... you'd let us go, Mister Dragon?"
I had no intention whatsoever of harming a human. I passed them in silence and turned my gaze on the lizardmen.
"Krru..."
"Kraaa!"
In their own fashion they brandished blades and raised their claws, as if they meant to threaten me. I couldn't say I felt threatened. No instinct warned me that I was in any danger. They were simply insignificant.
"Pretty sure this thing isn't interested in us."
"Then we're in luck! Let's get out of here!"
I watched the two of them flee, then looked at the lizardmen, who ignored me entirely and started after them. Let the humans go, they seemed to think, and they themselves would be let go as well.
...Hm. Leave them, and they'll be caught, won't they.
Decided, then. The lizardmen would have to die.
"Th-they're coming after us? Damn it all—!"
"Run! Our best bet is to sprint all the way to the village... we can fend them off at least once...?"
There was a wet tear and a crunch. The lizardman fastest on their heels had spread its sharp claws wide to swing — and I drove the armored tip of my tail clean through its heart.
Go back.
"Th-that was meant for us, right, brother?"
"I... think so?"
They stared at me blankly as the telepathy reached them, then broke into a run. I watched them go and turned.
"Krr..."
"Krrrng... kraa?"
I had only shifted a little to look at them, and already the lizardmen had their claws raised, bristling with wariness. I drew a quiet breath. One or two I might have dealt with individually, but there looked to be a dozen or more, and I had no desire to waste time snuffing them out one careful life at a time.
...If you had kept quietly to yourselves, none of this would have happened.
I gathered the cold in my mouth and let it out as lightly as an exhaled breath, and that breath became a killing chill in an instant, freezing the lizardmen solid where they stood. To me it was nothing but one small exhalation. To them it was a Breath, and it froze and hardened everything before my eyes.
...Well. I froze them in a single breath, so it couldn't have hurt much.
My role was only to strike down whatever threatened humankind — a guardian, not some destroyer who shattered the order of nature and toppled its balance. So even now I had breathed out only a very weak Breath, flash-freezing six or seven of the lizardmen, and left the rest with a warning. If they threatened humans in this territory again, if they raised another commotion, I would not sit still.
With a crack, I set a foot on one of the frozen lizardmen and shattered it, then let out a low growl. The remnants who had been bristling at me fled all at once. I simply watched them go.
Hah... what a nuisance. Still, if I slaughtered every last one of them over something like this, that would be a problem of its own...
This was enough, I decided, and I started back toward the lair at an easy pace. Of course I paused along the way — I had pierced a lizardman with the tip of my tail, so I dipped the bloodied end lightly into the lake and washed it clean. A splash, and the stain was gone. The reek of blood was something I thoroughly disliked.
About two days left, is it? Etiquette and the like I can cram into my head at the last moment, and aside from that... there isn't much else to think about, is there?
A dragon sitting an interview to serve as tutor to the Grand Ducal House of Kalinix. Anyone who heard of it would think it absurd. But if I succeeded, my chances of surviving in one piece would be at least a little higher.
I could only hope it all went well.