Strutting Before the Chrysalis

When night fell, the enemy came down on the Larks Free Cooperative with everything they had, as if this were their last chance.

Nexark had already burned half the village, and most of the defenders were dead. Against the black-masked mages who slipped in under cover of the deep night, the cooperative had no strength left to fight.

But now the cooperative had a guardian worth the name.

Transparent swords began to pour from the headquarters, and they set about slaughtering the masked mages who had ringed the building. They were swords of light, the mark of the Guardian Saint Serzif. Quantum interference locked every possibility, every probability, to its optimal result; her blades would cut any substance, and nothing could break them. Before the magic that had held her for long years at the rank of Guardian Saint—the greatest mage in the Federation—even these enemies, disciplined and organized as they looked, were nothing more than a flock of sheep being torn apart by a wolf.

She cleared the attackers without ever stepping outside, and asked Pale a question.

"How many shall I leave alive?"

"It wouldn't matter. Look at them, throwing themselves at us even with you here. These aren't people who value their lives enough to tell the truth."

"Unpleasant fanatics," Serzif said, as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠if the very sight disgusted her.

Having swept aside that terrible offensive in an instant, she turned to Rekdos and demanded her payment without a shred of humility.

"The enemy is dealt with. Now, as promised, hand over the iron sphere in which Irok Dehaja's magic is sealed. Then our transaction will be concluded."

"But the dragon is still out there, is it not?"

"Give the sphere to Serzif, and the dragon will have no further business here. This time, I think we'd do well to do as she says."

"I suppose that's true..."

Rekdos had lost many comrades to the dragon's monstrous magic, and his wariness of the beast came out sharp and frayed. It was only natural. The organization he had spent his whole life building had been brought down completely by a single living thing. Pale settled him as best he could and set about untangling the mess that had gathered around the iron sphere.

Rekdos called one of his men and ordered him to bring the real sphere. The subordinate left with a tense face.

Watching him go, Pale spoke as if the arrangement did not sit well with him.

"You left the sphere in your subordinates' keeping?"

"I had the most trustworthy among them bury it in a place only we know."

"Isn't that dangerous? Better to keep it on you."

"The opposite. I'm not even a mage. If I were carrying the real sphere, people like you would take it as easily as twisting a child's wrist."

It was a rational answer. For the thoroughly weak, there is no such thing as the strength to protect what they treasure. Their only strategy was absolute security, and camouflage. By keeping the sphere somewhere no one could find even if every last one of them died, they paradoxically guaranteed their own lives. Pale judged it a rather convincing ploy, and nodded.

While he and Rekdos were still talking, another subordinate suddenly burst into the office.

"What's the meaning of this, without so much as a knock?"

"It's... a cooperative member's body has been found."

"A body?"

The man held out a set of dog tags. Rekdos checked whose they were, and his eyes trembled.

"This is the man I just called to the office."

The murdered subordinate was the very one Rekdos had, only moments ago, ordered to retrieve the sphere.

A nameless wrongness began to seep up, and Pale felt the first prick of unease.

What is this feeling? What am I missing?

Something snagged at him. He was overlooking something, and he turned it over slowly, carefully. Then the answer left his mouth as if something else had spoken it.

"Why did the dragon show us a human form?"

Think it through, and the thing became obvious. If the dragon could turn itself human, it had no need to pick a fight at all. Anyone who could compress a body that vast into a human shape could disguise that shape as a Rox without any particular effort. Had Pale been the dragon, he would have become a Rox, slipped into the cooperative, and waited for his chance. And yet the dragon had deliberately come at them in human form and offered battle.

On top of that, Nexark had reinforcements. If he had struck together with the mages who attacked the cooperative earlier, then even with Pale's group joining the defense, the cooperative would have been wiped out. But only Rekdos and a tiny circle at the top knew where the sphere was. Slaughter the cooperative, and the sphere would still be out of reach.

Which meant the dragon might never have intended to win.

What if he was hiding in human form from the very beginning?

He ran the story from the dragon's side. I am the dragon. I take human shape and infiltrate the organization that hid the sphere. But the sphere is nowhere to be found. By Rekdos's cunning it has been concealed where only he and his inner circle know to look, and a dragon who has only just slipped in among humans cannot learn that place. Kill the humans outright, and the sphere stays buried forever in a spot no one will ever find.

Then the dragon has only one move. Induce them to move the sphere.

Don't tell me... he lost on purpose?

Give them the illusion of victory, and the location they had buried so deep would at last be brought into the open.

The moment the thought landed, Pale shouted.

"Rekdos! Where did you hide the sphere? Tell me!"

"In the middle of the desert, not far from here."

"Guide us! Now!"

Rekdos must have felt the danger in it too. He climbed into a jeep with Pale and Serzif, and they set off.

They left the village behind and came to a barren stretch of desert so harsh that no one lived there. And there, at last, they saw it: a dragon, restored to its complete form.

"I have been waiting."

In the middle of the desert, an enormous dragon sheathed in black scales waited with its wings spread. Moonlight from a nearly cloudless night glanced off scales like plate armor. Perched on a rock at the desert's heart, the dragon simply watched in silence as Pale's group came toward it.

"I have been waiting."

The voice was a young man's, and there was even something like welcome in it. A dragon's mouth is poorly made for human speech, so the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠voice was nothing more than magic setting the air atremble—the voice the dragon had decided suited it.

Pale stepped down from the jeep. The dragon, power laid bare, pressed on him like a weight, but he did not give ground.

"Nexark. Is this our third meeting?"

The first had been the dragon's breath in the abandoned factory. The second, the human shape at the cooperative. This, Pale had thought, was the third.

Nexark said something he had not expected.

"You never noticed, but in truth we have met far more often than that. While you were offering medical aid at the cooperative, I passed by your side more times than I can count."

"Hah. So that's how it was."

The dragon had disguised itself as one of the cooperative's own and waited, cunning as a knife, for its chance.

"Reading a human mind is easier than following the track a bug leaves across the sand."

"And yet humans like that tricked you into breathing in a bellyful of poison?"

"Do you humans not get stung by insects ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠now and then? It is much the same."

This time Nexark showed no anger at the provocation. Accomplishment sat in his voice, and the leisure of a purpose fulfilled.

"There were a few uncertainties along the way. But at the very last, everything has gone according to my will. Irok Dehaja's magic is in this hand."

The dragon opened its great hand, and something inside glowed purple. Pale sharpened his sight with magic. It was the iron sphere that held Irok Dehaja's magic—except the sphere had been opened, and at its heart an unidentifiable purple light blazed.

"You bastard!"

Serzif formed, on the instant, a gigantic sword of light large enough to cleave the dragon's bulk in a single stroke, and hurled it. To a Guardian Saint, one of the pinnacles of humankind, even an ancient dragon was no difficult opponent. Serzif alone had cut down dragons by the dozen across her life—a veteran champion—and her magic carried the strength to fell an ancient dragon at a blow.

The dragon was not afraid in the slightest. It looked down on her magic as if the sight were amusing.

With that single phrase, the gigantic sword of light vanished like smoke.

Pale and Rekdos reeled. Serzif's eyes flew wide.

"N-no... Irok Dehaja's magic..."

The moment the dragon wielded that unidentifiable magic, shock was not enough for her. Her whole body shook. Serzif—the veteran champion, one of the strongest mages in the world—looked now like a frail girl.

"It was we dragons who completed Irok Dehaja's magic. Possess his power, and we can use it as well."

"And what, exactly, is this magic of Irok Dehaja that everyone won't shut up about? I'd be grateful if you told me."

Pale had the gall to demand the nature of the magic from the enemy himself. Nexark laughed as if he could not believe the nerve of it, and made no effort to hide the answer.

"Finality?"

"Irok Dehaja's magic summons the concept of the world's end."

At last, from the dragon's mouth, the secret of the strongest and worst magic in history was laid open.

The dragon sang the end of the world as if reciting a poem.

"Irok Dehaja's magic calls the concept of the end into this world. It is magic that pronounces an end upon every phenomenon, every spell, and every substance, and because all things have an end, it cannot be resisted. No mighty power, no magic, no phenomenon is of any use before it. It is, quite literally, the Authority of Finality, set on the scale opposite the Authority of Creation."

"...... What the dragon says is true."

Serzif spoke with a grimace.

"Before the Authority of Finality, the twelve Guardian Saints and even the hundred and forty-four Holy Paladins could offer no resistance at all. The strongest magics in the world vanished before they could so much as touch Irok Dehaja's body, and with a single word, like a god, he pronounced our end. In the end, we had no choice but to retreat..."

"But my comrades gave their lives and succeeded in subduing Irok Dehaja. There will be a way this time as well."

"No one knows how your comrades subdued him. As far as I know, that magic has no weakness."

Pale tried to force his fighting spirit alight, but Serzif's face had already gone white, and the will to fight had left her.

Meanwhile the iron sphere, shedding purple light, rose weightlessly and stopped before the dragon's chest.

"Now then. What shall I do with this authority? First, I ought to keep my promise to the humans. As the price of obtaining this power, I will end the life of every human in the Larks District."

"What!?"

Pale cried out, stunned by the words.

"Frankly, a contract with mere humans is of no concern to me. Unfortunately, this particular contract is founded upon magic... so even I have no choice but to honor it."

"Who in the world asked for a thing like that?"

"I am in an exceedingly fine mood just now, but that is no reason to tell you even that."

The purple light of the sphere floating before the dragon began to brighten. He truly meant to bring every life in the Larks District to an end.

"Stop it!"

To protect the people of her nation as a Guardian Saint, Serzif poured out every magic she possessed. Thousands of blades of light rushed the dragon, and every single one of them carried the strength to cut him down. Pale joined her. A Twisted Beast in the shape of an enormous crow, summoned in advance, plunged out of the sky and fell upon the dragon. Last of all, the mages of the Larks Free Cooperative—frightened by the sight of him, and still determined to defend their land—cast their iron-volley magic, and dozens of shells screamed toward the dragon.

The dragon only sneered, as if the whole of it were laughable.

At that one phrase, the host of magics rushing him vanished like smoke.

"It's over..."

Before a majesty like the authority of a god, despair began to spread through Pale's group.

And in the midst of it, a single magical puppet—Capra—reversed her grip on the sword in her hand, measured the distance to the sphere, and hurled the blade with every ounce of strength she had.

The sword flew in a straight line toward the sphere.

The dragon found it merely amusing. Nexark, wielding a Finality that had stopped hundreds of spells, had no reason to fear a single sword.

Once more, the dragon declared ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Finality. Astonishingly, the sword did not vanish.

He faltered for a moment, then pronounced an end upon the sword's motion. Even so, the blade only flew harder.

As sword and sphere closed, a rattled Nexark raised a barrier of flame with magic. The wall of fire could not stop the sword either. It flew on, and at last drove dead-center into the iron sphere that held the power of Finality.

KRZAAAK—!

Capra's sword and the sphere of Finality collided. Shockwaves of enormous force burst between them, one after another, and for an instant even the dragon staggered, along with Pale and the others.

"What is this...?!"

Faced with a sight that made no sense, the dragon was shaken for the first time.

And in that moment, Pale thought: if that magic of Finality truly was Irok Dehaja's magic, then Capra could erase it. Of course she could. Capra's true identity was Irok Dehaja himself. Dispelling one's own magic was simplicity itself.

He was right. The magic of Finality, so like the authority of a god, shattered like glass against Capra's sword, and vanished.