Five Adult Dragons Would Suffice
Urgent footsteps. The rough slam of a door.
Urgent footsteps. The rough slam of a door.
"We should get going," Lakia said quietly. "We've been sitting in this tavern long enough..."
The tavern in Krafcheten was still loud.
Three mercenaries had gone flying, three tables had been smashed, and a fake dragon claw had been exposed as a swamp crocodile's claw — and still the place recovered its own rhythm almost at once.
Someone went back to drinking. Someone laid bets on the fight. Someone picked a potato up off the floor and ate it.
Watching a beastfolk adventurer chew that potato with genuine satisfaction, Lakia briefly stopped thinking altogether.
Why is he eating that.
Is it good?
No. That's not the point.
Beneath the robe of Agnotu, Lakia quietly sighed.
The world outside the valley was noisier than she had expected.
People laughed easily, grew angry easily, fought easily, and forgot easily.
All of it was strange to her.
And a little exhausting.
Carnepisara was chewing meat in the form of an orc warrior.
He looked so natural at it that Lakia found that fact more uncomfortable than anything else now.
Dark green skin.
A thick neck.
Fangs showing between his lips.
An axe at his waist and a greatsword on his back.
None of it should have suited Carnepisara — and yet, somehow, it suited him disturbingly well.
Every time he chewed, the muscles of his jaw worked, and a few nearby orcs nodded with satisfied faces.
Lakia decided that watching any longer would be bad for her sanity.
"Yes."
Carnepisara swallowed the meat and spoke.
The voice was low and rough, but the way he spoke was still entirely Carnepisara.
"By now the baby dragons will be peeping and looking for you."
Lakia's eyes narrowed at once.
"Peeping?"
"Yes."
"My kids don't cry like that."
"The white hatchling peeps quite a lot."
"That's a cute sound."
"Indeed. A cute peep."
"That made it weirder."
Carnepisara laughed low in his orc's face.
The fangs showed.
Lakia's mind reeled all over again.
The contents were an old elf; the outside was a warrior of a race said to be unbeatable in close combat.
Both of them were laughing at once.
It was not a good sight.
Lakia stood up from her seat.
The robe of Agnotu slid and swayed over her shoulders.
People's eyes still could not linger on her for long.
No one would remember her.
Even that sensation was starting to tire her a little.
The feeling of being pushed one step outside the world.
Free — and at the same time, lonely.
Lakia waited for Carnepisara to rise.
When the orc warrior's enormous body left the chair, the chair creaked as if in relief.
Carnepisara set a few coins down on the table.
For the meat.
For the drinks.
For the table.
And probably for the mercenaries embedded in the floor as well.
The tavern keeper looked at the coins and nodded without a word.
A settlement worthy of Krafcheten.
Just as Lakia was about to walk toward the door—
Bang!
The tavern door slammed open hard.
Cold wind rushed in.
The bitter night air collided with the heat inside, and several candle flames shuddered at once.
The smells of liquor and meat and sweat tore for a moment.
A figure stood in the doorway.
A messenger.
Snow lay thick on his shoulders, and ice crystals clung to the ends of his hair.
A short cloak bore the mark of the kingdom's guild, and in his hand he clutched a sealed bundle of parchment.
His breathing was rough.
White breath poured from his mouth like smoke.
The tavern keeper complained first.
"Close the door. The drinks'll freeze."
The messenger shut the door at once.
But he did not apologize.
He did not even brush the snow from his gloves.
He walked straight into the tavern as he was.
Thud.
Wet boots pressed into the wooden floor.
Thud.
Once more.
The sound inside the tavern lowered a little.
It did not stop completely.
This was Krafcheten — a place where, even if someone walked in covered in blood, people first made sure of their own tankards.
But the messenger's face was not ordinary.
He spread the parchment on an empty table by the window.
The red seal was already half broken.
Several mercenaries who saw it set their drinks down.
A dwarf muttered low.
"Official dispatch."
An orc stopped laughing.
A beastfolk adventurer's ears pricked upward.
Carnepisara did not move either.
In the shape of an orc, he stood beside Lakia like a great shadow.
The messenger steadied his breath and spoke.
"Official dispatch from the northern front."
The tavern's noise died a little further.
Lakia stopped the foot that had been turning toward the door.
There was no particular reason.
Her heart beat very small, in a strange way.
The messenger's voice went on.
"The Empire has crossed the border."
This time it went truly quiet.
The air inside the tavern changed.
Into a space that moments ago had been filled with drink and laughter and fighting, something like the smell of iron suddenly seemed to seep.
No blood had been spilled yet.
But everyone thought of the smell of blood.
The messenger looked down at the parchment and read quickly.
"Three eastern fortresses fell in a single day."
Someone swore.
A small curse.
But clear.
"The Heireden Kingdom has declared a wartime draft. The Northern Guild Alliance, as of dawn today, is reassessing combat-capable personnel by rank and opening defense commissions as well as rear supply commissions."
The scrape of a chair sounded inside the tavern.
"Heireden?"
"Three eastern fortresses means they're serious."
"Those Empire bastards finally lost it."
"The Black Iron Legion?"
The messenger gave a short nod.
"The vanguard is presumed to be the Black Iron Legion. Magical corps accompaniment has also been confirmed."
This time someone laughed.
Whether from drink, from money, or from both was unclear.
"Magical corps means the pay'll be thick."
"Your head'll split open before you collect any pay."
"If it's the eastern mountain roads, it's not too late yet. Move fast and we can claim first position."
"Three fortresses in a day isn't 'almost late' — it's already late."
Voices came back to life.
Only they were different from before.
Not the laughter of a drinking party.
The sound of calculation.
The sound of people thinking of their weapons.
The sound of setting money and lives on the same scale.
The messenger read the final sentence.
"Combat compensation is three times the previous rate. Compensation for the severely wounded and for bereaved families will also be paid immediately under guild regulations."
Three times.
That word heated the tavern's blood.
Several mercenaries stood at once.
A dwarf smoothed his beard and headed for the commission board; two orcs looked at each other and grinned, showing their teeth.
A human swordsman drained his cup and checked his scabbard.
You could see Krafcheten's night turning its body toward war.
Lakia stood frozen where she was.
The messenger's voice still lingered by her ear.
Those names meshed together one by one.
Lakia knew this war.
More precisely — she had read about it.
At first it had begun like a border dispute.
Imperial forces shattered three eastern fortresses, and the surrounding kingdoms stalled between negotiation and support.
In that time the Black Iron Legion seized the mountain roads before the snow melted.
When spring came, the southern plains opened.
Heireden could not hold.
The capital burned.
The royal line was cut.
The protagonist lost everything for the first time beneath the fallen walls.
The story after that was desolate.
The survivors fled, comrades died one by one, and the Empire called its victory order.
The tips of Lakia's fingers went cold.
"Lady Lakia."
Carnepisara called her low.
It was an orc's voice.
But what lay beneath it was unmistakably Carnepisara's perception.
He had sensed that she knew something.
Perhaps not completely — but he had felt that the news she had just heard was not simply news of a war to her.
Lakia could not answer.
I can stop it.
The thought rose far too easily.
Really, far too easily.
Alduin only had to take wing.
If the black-scaled king breathed fire from the sky, the Empire's march would end.
The Black Iron Legion's armor would melt, the banners would become ash, and the soldiers who had crossed the fortresses would look up at the sky first.
Masor only had to move.
An invisible blade would cut the commander's throat, cut the magical corps' formulas, cut the supply lines.
An army that loses its head and its roads is no longer an army.
Gargantua only had to move.
Storms would seal the mountain roads, wind would turn the arrows, clouds would press down the sky — and the Empire would have to worry about survival rather than advance.
No.
She might not even need those three.
A few adult dragons from the valley might be enough.
Lakia knew that.
The moment she knew it, something inside her went cold.
"Let's go back."
Lakia said.
Her voice was small.
Carnepisara asked nothing more.
He tossed one more coin to the tavern keeper.
The keeper looked from the war dispatch to the fallen mercenaries to the orc warrior, then pocketed the coin without a word.
Lakia walked toward the door.
Beneath the robe of Agnotu she moved like someone almost invisible.
But to herself she was far too clear.
The sound of her heart.
The cold in her fingertips.
Heireden's burning capital rising in her mind.
And overlaid upon it, Alduin's dark-crimson breath.
Lakia bit her lip.
Outside, the bitter wind struck her face.
Krafcheten's lights were still warm.
Yellow light leaked from every tavern, smoke rose from chimneys, and people in the streets still walked like living people even after hearing the news of war.
They were living people, yes.
Many of them would soon go to the battlefield.
Many of them would not return.
Lakia knew that fact.
Carnepisara walked beside her in silence.
The orc's footprints sank deep into the snow.
Lakia's footprints were almost invisible beneath the hem of Agnotu.
Like that, the two of them left Krafcheten.
Once outside the walls, the city's noise fell away behind them.
Even from a distance the tavern lights were still visible.
In the bitter night, those lights were small and stubborn.
Lakia looked back.
A sanctuary for warriors and adventurers.
A city that did not discriminate by race.
A city that held strength as its clearest value.
That city was now moving toward war.
And Lakia knew how that war would end.
At least — she knew the ending when she did nothing.
"You know something of this."
Carnepisara asked.
Lakia did not answer.
Only much later did she speak.
"Maybe."
"Maybe."
"I can't say it precisely."
Carnepisara nodded.
He did not press further.
He understood that she was carrying something of a kind she could not speak of now.
Sometimes he was excessively perceptive.
There were times she was grateful for that, and times she hated it.
Right now she was grateful.
As they entered the mountain road, the wind grew sharper.
Snow crunched under their ankles, and the trees stood in the dark like black fingers.
Krafcheten's light grew smaller and smaller.
As she walked, Lakia kept thinking.
I can stop the war.
If I send the children.
Those words kept turning over in her head.
Alduin.
Masor.
Gargantua.
The adult dragons.
Countless names rose up.
And behind those names rose the armies of humans.
The protagonist's country.
Lakia shook her head inwardly.
No.
No.
I don't know.
Was this something she could so easily call no?
People would die.
Children would cry, parents would die, walls would fall, a nation would vanish.
What did it mean to be able to stop that and still not stop it?
Indifference?
Evading responsibility?
Or protecting the children?
Thoughts chased one another by the tail.
No answer came.
Only one thing was clear.
She did not want to use the children as weapons.
Because they were dragons they were strong; because they were strong they could end a war; because they could end a war, use them — that way of thinking.
That way of thinking, at least, she hated.
How was it different from the Magic Tower wanting to study dragons?
How was it different from the Empire turning the strong into weapons?
How was it different from a kingdom trying to own a catastrophe?
Lakia did not want to stand in the same place as them.
But.
People would die.
Those words came back again.
Lakia closed her eyes, then opened them.
The night was long.
By the time they returned to the valley, dawn was still far off.
The Dragons' Valley held a sound entirely different from Krafcheten's.
No tankards, no messengers, no talk of compensation.
Instead there were vast breaths, the resonance of cooling stone, and the sleep-talk of young dragons.
The white hatchling was truly peeping.
Near Gargantua's foreleg it flailed its little feet in its sleep, crying softly as if searching for the place where Lakia had gone.
Lakia looked at it and smiled for a moment.
It really does peep.
But the smile did not last long.
When that child grows up.
When that small cry someday becomes a roar that shakes the mountain range.
Will I have to show that child war too?
Or hide it until the end?
Lakia felt her throat close.
Gargantua was already awake.
In the deepest part of the valley he waited for her, coiled like a mountain range.
Six pairs of wings were folded, and his vast eyes shone clearly even in the dark.
Carnepisara had already returned to his elven form.
He bowed his head briefly to Gargantua, then spoke to Lakia.
"I shall withdraw."
Lakia nodded.
Carnepisara asked nothing further and moved away.
The old elf who knew how to ask uncomfortable questions also knew when to step back so that someone could speak with an ancient dragon.
Lakia stood before Gargantua.
For a while she could say nothing.
Gargantua spoke first.
"Mother."
His voice was low and deep.
"You have brought something heavy with you."
Lakia smiled faintly.
It had too little strength to be called a smile.
"That obvious?"
"The wind knew first."
Lakia looked down at her hands.
She had taken off Agnotu, but she still felt as if she were slipping somewhere.
In Krafcheten she had left no mark on anyone's memory.
But the news of war had left too deep a mark inside her.
"War has started."
Lakia said.
Gargantua did not close his eyes.
"The Empire crossed the border, and Heireden declared a wartime draft."
"Is that so."
"This war is going to get big."
Lakia drew a breath.
"Very big."
Gargantua listened quietly.
Lakia told him what she had heard in Krafcheten.
And she did not tell him the future she knew.
She could not.
But she did not hide the fact that this war would kill countless people.
"I can stop it."
Lakia said.
"With our kids."
The words spread low through the valley.
In the distance Alduin opened his eyes.
The soft scrape of Masor's scales went still behind a nearby rock.
Gargantua looked at Lakia.
Lakia bowed her head.
"I thought if Alduin went, it would be over."
The words caught in her throat.
She got them out anyway.
"I thought if Masor went, he could cut the commanders, the magical corps, the supply lines — all of it."
Her fingertips went cold.
"I thought if you moved, the Empire wouldn't even make it over the mountain roads."
The more she spoke, the more she hated herself.
"And I hated myself for thinking that."
Gargantua did not answer at once.
Lakia kept going.
"They're my children."
The words were small.
But the whole valley heard them.
"If it's 'because they're dragons they're strong, because they're strong they can end a war, because they can end a war we should use them'—"
Lakia bit her lip.
"Then I'm the same as the people I hate."
The Magic Tower.
The kingdoms.
The Empire.
Those who wanted to own what was strong.
Those who wanted to call dragons catastrophes, weapons, resources.
Lakia did not want to stand in the same place as them.
"I don't want to use the children as weapons."
Then Gargantua laughed.
At first it was low.
Khh.
The sound rolled across the valley floor.
Before Lakia could even lift her head, the laugh grew larger.
"Khahahahahahahaha!"
The valley shook.
Snow poured in cascades from the cliffs above.
Several young dragons who had been sleeping jerked their heads up in alarm, and the white hatchling startled at its own tail and tumbled over backward.
Lakia stared blankly at Gargantua.
It was a laugh she had never seen before.
Vast.
Low.
As if a mountain range were laughing.
"Why are you laughing?"
Gargantua laughed for a long time.
When he finally settled the laugh, he lowered his head.
"Mother."
He said.
"Would a dragon take so much as a scratch from the attacks of mere humans?"
Lakia closed her mouth.
The rebuttal she had been about to make caught in her throat.
Gargantua spoke low.
"Humans are cunning."
His voice filled the valley.
"They forge iron, brew poison, weave formulas, and endlessly fashion tools to hide their frail bodies."
He looked far toward Alduin.
"But those things are only fearsome in wars between humans."
Alduin's golden eyes shone in the dark.
"If an ordinary spear were to touch Lord Alduin's scales, the spear would break first."
Gargantua's gaze turned toward the invisible presence of Masor.
"If humans tried to seize Lord Masor, they would lose their wrists before they even knew what they had tried to seize."
And he moved one of his wings, just slightly.
That alone turned the direction of the wind through the valley.
"To forge chains that could bind me, humans would first have to learn how to bind a mountain range."
Lakia could say nothing.
When you love someone, they look small.
If you have held them in your arms, you start to imagine the world could hold that child too.
But the world cannot hold Alduin.
Alduin can only burn the world.
She had known that fact — and still she kept forgetting it.
Gargantua's laughter slowly faded.
"What Mother must truly fear is not that the children will be hurt by humans."
The wind in the valley lowered.
"It is that the dragons will hurt the humans."
It was the truth.
And so it was heavier.
Gargantua's voice continued low.
"To a dragon, destruction is not a sin."
Lakia asked softly.
"Then am I suppressing the children's nature?"
Gargantua's gaze turned toward Alduin.
"Choosing what to destroy is learning."
His eyes returned to Lakia.
"Giving them that learning is Mother's achievement."
Lakia was silent for a long time.
Then she drew out the most frightening question of all.
"...In your opinion, how many dragons would it take to end the war?"
Gargantua did not answer at once.
He seemed to be imagining the war.
Imperial forces.
The Black Iron Legion.
Magical corps.
Fortresses.
Supply lines.
Banners.
He seemed to set all of it upon those vast eyes and calmly weigh it.
And a moment later, he spoke.
"Excluding Lord Alduin, Lord Masor, and myself..."
Lakia swallowed her breath.
"Five adults would suffice."
Fewer than she had expected.