I Want to Be Acknowledged
"Dragon this, dragon that... So it wasn't a Western dragon at all. It was an Eastern one."
Not the Western beast, with its massive torso, its lizard tail, the bat wings rooted in its back, and those greedy eyes. The scales lay packed as tight as a fish's mail. The body was long and lithe and springy as fresh noodles, deer antlers branching out beside the brow, whiskers bristling stiff from the snout. A true dragon—emblem of kings, auspicious being worshipped since ancient days—lay sprawled in utter exhaustion upon the cold iron plate.
"Doesn't look good at all."
Scales that ought to have shone like infinite life were soaked in blood and had lost their color, torn away in ragged sheets until the flesh beneath lay bare. Clear tubes had been driven into that exposed meat. It gave off a scorched stench, and now and then some unknowable fluid was forced through them. Of the horns that should have grown in splendor, one had been ripped out entirely and the other snapped clean at the halfway point. The whiskers were gone from the root, nothing left of them. Every claw on the limbs of the upper body and the lower had been pulled, and pus frothed there like boiling foam; four fingers and eight toes were missing, with only the torn marks to show where they had been.
It was a wretched sight, painful just to look at. Years of experience let Alexei read the traces of torture in the dragon—and a malicious, scientific torture at that. They had kept her just short of death, walking a razor's edge so she could be used again whenever they pleased. A little farther over that line, and what the three of them would have found was not a majestic dragon but a dragon-shaped slab of meat.
"Ah..."
Sipsado's face crumpled. The satgat hiding her head slipped down without her noticing, and emptiness and pain welled across her eyes.
"Why... why would such a thing be done to you..."
You, who ought to have had the reverence of all the world—how could you be made to suffer treatment so unjust?
The dam she had braced against her feelings burst without warning. Joy, memory, and the longing of a reunion became fuel for what she felt now, and the rage she had banked beneath a thick skin came boiling up.
"Hhhk... hhhk..."
The breath was faint and irregular, absurd on a body that size. Sipsado drew toward the dragon's eye on steps that shook and shook.
Tall for a woman at five foot seven, she still had to crane her gaze a long way up to find that eye. She would have to rise twenty-five feet at least, perhaps thirty, before she reached where she meant to go. Her robes fluttered. Her feet churned the empty air, and cloud gathered to obey them.
"Mother. Can you hear your daughter's voice?"
She bit her lip and forced the words out. Two wishes lived in her at once: that her mother might be left to rest as she was, and that she would wake and prove she was still alive.
"Mother. Your unworthy daughter has come so late. Please forgive me."
As gently as if she were tending a fragile infant, Sipsado's fair hand came to rest on the dragon's eyelid. The best restoration she had to give seeped in beneath the skin. Her breathing turned rough. She was dividing her own vitality and offering it up.
"Haa. Haa."
Only when she had sunk to her knees, and her mind was all but ready to snap, did Sipsado take her hand away.
"...Nn... mm..."
Had the struggle reached her? The breathing steadied, and the dragon's eyelid flickered.
"Mother! Mother! It is your daughter! Are you—are you with us?!"
Sipsado hauled her trembling legs beneath her and pressed in close.
"...Ju... a...?"
The dragon's lips stirred. The body was plainly at death's door, and yet the cry fell clear, carrying true to Alexei and Dan Miryong where they stood apart.
At the sound of her own name, Sipsado broke and wept outright.
"Yes. Yes, Mother. It is Jua. Your daughter, Yong Jua...!"
"...So you... came... after all..."
The dragon was not surprised to see her. As if something inevitable had simply come to pass, she let out only a grief-stricken groan.
"M-Mother. Why would you say such a thing?"
Sipsado had come to save her. From where she stood, the words were bewildering.
"...That you... came... to save me... gladdens me... But... you should not... have come..."
The dragon heaved her vast body up. Hoses wired into her all over spat electric fire, and wounds that had been staunched burst open with wet, heavy sounds. In an instant the floor beneath her drowned in a sea of blood.
The coiled mass rose straight, and the majesty of it was staggering. What stood before them was no wounded, dying weak thing, but a sacred mystery—a dragon out of legend. Caught in her shadow, Alexei and Dan Miryong went blank, cold sweat breaking at the power rolling off her.
"I will wring out the last of my strength and get you out of here."
She sounded as if she meant to burn life's final flame. Vigor and clarity had returned to her voice.
"You must not! Kill your daughter instead!"
Sipsado knew at once that she meant it. The dragon answered with a warm smile.
"Give the little one my regards..."
The authority she released flooded the cavern with white light.
And then...
Nothing happened at all.
......?
Braced for whatever was about to come, the three of them cocked their heads.
"H-how can this be...?!"
When her power produced no effect whatsoever, the dragon shook with fear. She fixed Sipsado with a glare sharp enough to cut.
"J-Jua...! Above...! What in the world is up there?!"
"...Above us are heroes who have come to strike down evil."
"Heroes? You call them heroes...?"
The corner of the dragon's mouth spasmed.
KRRRRRUMBLE!!!
The cavern lurched, as if the whole of it were about to come down.
"Dan Miryong! Have they spotted us?!"
"No! If they'd spotted us, they'd have done it already! That sound came from underneath!"
Shaaaaaa...
Something. Something was coming up. Something no living creature could ignore. Right now. Rising from below toward where they stood. They could not stay here. They were too close to that.
"Dan Miryong! Get the dragon on your back! I'll break a path upward! Get to Dan Miryu!"
"Damn it!"
Dan Miryong spat the curse and swelled his body.
"Mother! I do not understand what you are saying, but this is the moment we must get clear! Please release your dragon form!"
"...I must go... like this... If I become human again... the wounds... will worsen."
Her voice broke apart, stammering. The vitality Sipsado had shared with her was nearly spent.
"Not a single easy job in the lot!"
Dan Miryong, now a dragon himself, seized her in desperate haste. Blood smeared thick and sticky across his shoulder.
"Child... you..."
"Some dying dragon you are. Why won't you shut up? You're a patient—act like one, close your mouth, and hold still!"
"...Is this... also... fate..."
KRRRRRUMBLE!!!
Tree roots showed through the floor. Alexei had no time left.
"No time! Go!"
Thousands of lines scored the ceiling. A passage opened, wider than the one Pele had torn.
"Jua... take these words... to that one..."
In a consciousness already going out, the dragon left Sipsado a message. Sipsado's ears strained wide to catch it.
"The One......"
KRA-KRA-KRA-KOOM!!!
Sipsado never heard the voice that was meant to follow. From below, the true body of the roots began to show itself, and her mind was yanked toward the way out. The message that failed to reach her would be known to the dragon alone.
"So this is how it goes. Damn it all."
On the monitor, the scene played out. Thousands of troops gathered over half a year were falling, worth less than garbage. Even the copies of the executives—the ones who had dosed themselves with death and the D-series—could not break the limit of being fakes. They could not reach the genuine article, the monster, and so they were being driven back.
Scientist let out a heavy sigh and turned to A.
"What's become of the request for authorization?"
"...No response, as of now."
"Give me the terminal."
Scientist snatched it and called the boss on the direct line known only to the executives.
A frequency no human ear could register drew itself out.
Click.
"You timed that call perfectly."
"Boss..."
"Do as you like. It doesn't matter."
"And if you're going to do it anyway, don't hide it. I'd rather you dragged every last thing out into the open."
Scientist swallowed hard.
How much does he already know?
No.
Did he permit this from the very beginning?
He felt as if he had become a monkey in a zoo. An Absolute whose intentions, motives, and thoughts even the greatest intellect on Earth could not dare to read. Had he been nothing to that Absolute but a toy for amusement?
I can't deny it.
And that was precisely why.
I want to be acknowledged.
The man had taken him into his service, and he had given that man his loyalty. Was there any subordinate, anywhere, who did not hunger for a superior's recognition?
"I will carry out your command."
"Fight well, Scientist."
The call cut off. The terminal was destroyed.
"Scientist, sir..."
"A. Command is yours. I'm going down."
"Godspeed."
Seen off by his subordinates, Scientist stepped into the elevator. He entered the code and descended toward the private floor where it lay enshrined.
Vwoooom.
Down. Down. Through the glacial earth. To the very bottom of hell.
Ding.
He had arrived. The elevator doors opened, and Scientist set his foot in hell.
He passed roots that thrust upward in violent, motley color, and went inward. Through a hungry-ghost melee of eating and being eaten, through a vortex of appetite that wanted to devour even a mouthful more, he kept hold of himself and pressed deeper.
Gulp. Gulp. Crunch. Crunch. Retch. Retch.
At the center of hell, something wept and ate. Ate and wept. Vomited and suffered. Suffered and vomited. An endless turning of samsara. The king of hell, whose hunger could never be filled, was there.