A Visitor to the Lair (1)
"Haaahm... Am I really just weak in the mornings... or am I simply a little worn out?"
Blinking, I glided quietly through the sky above a forest set a little apart from the busy streets. The first time I had tried to leap into the air, the fear of falling had come well ahead of anything else—but once I was actually flying, it proved remarkably steady. Faster than walking, and more convenient besides: nothing to mind, and no worry of colliding with anything. The advantages were considerable.
"For now... I've bought clothes, and I've confirmed the official notice about the tutor... so perhaps I have about three days to spare?"
How I would spend those remaining three days was something I would have to decide for myself. The tutor interview was set for four days from now, and the work itself amounted to little more than simple lessons in etiquette and manners. Beyond that, the notice said I would look after the young master, Aiden, from morning until evening, and might rest while he attended his other lessons.
Taken at face value, it hardly looked like difficult work, and I thought I could manage it. But when I considered Aiden's personality as it stood now, I couldn't help wondering. What in the world had happened to him in the original story, that seven years from now—by the time he entered the academy and reached his fourth year—his character would have turned so completely around?
"For a sharp-tongued little troublemaker to mature that much in seven years... I suppose it's possible, but..."
Seeing him as he was, I couldn't picture it at all. I tilted my head and flew on toward the lair. Thinking it over now wouldn't amount to much anyway. What mattered was the simple fact that this had been his nature as a child, and the guess that some reason or other must have existed for him to later grow into the gentle person I remembered. Those two things were about as far as I could take it.
Thud.
I set my feet down quietly in the lair, awash in blue crystal, sat on a small step, and sank into thought.
"Hmm... The best I can do for now is sit the tutor interview. Beyond that, I suppose I could wander Kartz and gather a few pieces of information..."
In the end, the purpose of everything I did would come down to my own survival. Whatever direction I chose, I must not let myself feel guilt or misgiving. I swore it once more, and slowly fell into contemplation.
First I would roam Kartz and make for its library. What I needed above all else was the small store of miscellaneous knowledge—the etiquette one was expected to keep in this world. Growing stronger could hardly be called the priority. With Mircania's body, and the knowledge I carried from outside this world, that could be pushed well down the list. I already knew I could cast magic with ease, and I had memorized the offensive spells to a fair degree, so that was no great problem.
What I lacked was any decent grasp of this world's common sense, or of its odds and ends. When I had played it as a game, my mind had held only the thought that a game was a game, and trivial knowledge had slipped past me with nothing more than a vague oh, so that's a thing. So the first thing I needed to learn was the small courtesies a noble was expected to show here, and the roundabout turns of phrase people commonly used. Studying those, and picking up something of the food and the land besides, would do no harm.
"...All of that assumes I can actually become the tutor, of course..."
And if I carried every step through, and things went according to plan, I meant to approach the Grand Ducal House of Kalinix in the north while hiding, utterly, that I was the Icefire Dragon, and sit the tutor's interview. Even if I failed, I had already made Aiden's acquaintance, so there would be little to regret. But if I passed, then it would be better to nudge him, little by little, toward the personality of the Aiden I had known.
I didn't know what chain of events had turned him into someone so unlike who he was now, but if that change had come of some tragedy, it would ache. A character I had liked—one I had held real affection for—had stood before my eyes only yesterday as a living person, and I did not want him to suffer anything of the sort. All the more if the blow was severe enough to remake his nature entirely. So I would block such things from the shadows as best I could, and change him through words and time, however slowly. With that plan settled, I quietly lay down on the floor.
Lying there, all that greeted my eyes was a swell of my own body beneath white cloth, and it drew nothing from me but a sigh. Still, a delicately made woman's face would be easier to approach at a first meeting than some plain or rough-looking man. Taking a little comfort in the thought that this, at least, was fortunate, I looked up at the sky to savor the peace.
A shadow had been crossing above my lair for some time, and it had begun to grate. I nearly considered releasing Polymorph—but I hadn't been watching closely enough to care what it was, and I still couldn't be sure of its shape.
"Hmm..."
...Should I freeze it?
The impulse lasted only a moment. I jerked upright and shook my head hard. It had only been two days. Two days, and already I was thinking like this? I was a person. I would never look down on humankind, and I would hold every single life dear. So long as nothing laid a hand on what lay within my domain, I too would live in peace. I vowed it once more and lifted my eyes to the sky.
I didn't know why that shape was coming toward me.
Flutter—
Great wings, silver shot through with blood-red, beat the air, and a crimson dragon descended, looking down at me. I had expected that meeting a dragon would bring some tingling sense, or something like it, but I felt neither any particular sensation nor any pressure at all, and so I simply watched. A somewhat familiar form—an appearance that seemed as if it had been stamped into my mind at least once before. When I stared for that reason, the dragon tilted its head as well, then Polymorphed in an instant and stood before me.
"You always swore you'd never use Polymorph, and now you've changed your mind?"
"...Zernisha."
Zernisha de Asteria. A dragon known as the Blood Tiger Dragon, and a figure who had shown her face steadily from the main story of Icarus Chronicle onward—an ally to the protagonist, Icaria. I had no idea why she had appeared so suddenly before my eyes. I swallowed the question and regarded her with a blank face. There was no way to know what she was thinking in seeking out my lair, or what she intended.
Had this been the point where the original began, it might have been different. This was a world seven years before the start of the main story, and the knowledge I carried held little meaning just yet.
"Zernisha? Can't you just call me Jeri, the way you usually do? Why so sudden—did I do something wrong?"
"Ah... um... You didn't do anything wrong. I just... wanted to call you that."
On her side there seemed to be no particular hitch or problem; the air of it was closer to a casual visit, so I set my worries aside. For the moment, I didn't think much harm would come of simply taking her as she appeared, without reading further into it. Before Mircania had been swept up in madness, the two of them seemed to have been quite close, and so I stayed where I sat and quietly looked at Zernisha.
"So what brings you all the way out here? Your lair is quite far from this one, and yet you came without a word."
"Did you eat something strange? Why are you suddenly being so formal with me?"
Perhaps the way I spoke felt unnatural to her, too unlike the Mircania she knew. Seeing her react that way, I cast about for an excuse.
"Mmm... I have a little business that will take me down into Kartz, and I mean to move while hiding that I'm a dragon. Speaking casually to someone you've only just met looks a bit odd, doesn't it? I'm practicing."
"...So you're going down to Kartz while hiding that you're a dragon—hiding that you're Mircania—and you're practicing formal speech for it?"
I couldn't tell whether she found my words absurd or simply unbelievable, but the way she reacted made it plain enough that this was nothing like Mircania's original temperament. Thinking back, in the story Mircania had never once used polite speech, not even when she spoke through telepathy.
"Ahaha... Something like that?"
"Unexpected. You used to say that even if you guarded humans as a guardian dragon, you'd never change your attitude."
"...Sometimes, change is necessary."
She didn't seem to dismiss it as pure nonsense, at least. Zernisha nodded and sat.
"I'll sit a while. I only came to visit today."
What would she talk about—and how did a true dragon, unlike a half-made thing like me, look when at rest? Half expectant and half uneasy, I quietly watched her.