Night at the Outpost
To the Dragonkin who worshipped dragons as gods, there were no kings, no bloodline-based castes, and not even a name for a nation.
Bound by race rather than nationality, the Dragonkin were better described as a theocracy when set against the monarchical Frisia Kingdom.
The only catch was that their so-called god actually existed—and was currently sunk into a long, death-like eternal slumber, leaving the Dragonkin essentially abandoned.
Even so, they still knelt three times a day in prayer toward their gods. They wished for the peaceful rest of those slumbering deities, begged to be watched over, and believed that the dragons had simply entered this great repose according to some higher purpose.
Where the Frisia Kingdom called those who guarded the Dragon's Border the Border Defense Corps, the Dragonkin named their counterparts Heretic Inquisitors.
They were a different breed from the Heretic Judges. Any Dragonkin who dared doubt the dragons was handed over to a Heretic Judge. Matters involving other races, however, fell to the Heretic Inquisitors.
A Dragonkin was at least granted a trial. Other races who did not serve the dragons were already confirmed heretics; for them there was no trial—only pure judgment.
"Haa… may the Dragon's Breath be with us again today."
Heretic Inquisitor Zeronia finished her evening prayers by pressing her hands to her chest and letting out a single long breath. She rose slowly and began reviewing the day's duties once more.
Some mocked this place as a backwater outpost; others praised it as the sacred shield that protected the Dragonkin. In truth, the Dragon's Border was neither grueling enough to deserve mockery nor holy enough to earn praise.
Boredom.
Yes—what filled this place to the brim was pure, unrelieved boredom and monotony.
Every so often a deranged human or a criminal would cross over, and toying with them restored a measure of mental balance. That was the extent of the excitement.
The sun had sunk low enough that the lamps needed lighting, and Zeronia thought another ordinary day was about to end exactly as it always did.
Then came the frantic footsteps.
The gently flickering lamp flame whipped violently. Without even knocking, an Agent—little more than an extension of the Inquisitor's own limbs—burst into the room.
Ordinarily she would have snapped at him on the spot, but one look at his state told her this was no ordinary matter. She waited for the report.
"I-Inquisitor! A human has just crossed the fence on the border side! He wounded two of our soldiers and is currently on the run!"
"He's lost his mind."
A human, of all things?
Zeronia snatched up the helmet and massive halberd she had set aside for evening prayers and listened to the continuing report.
"Fortunately one of the two Dragonkin managed to escape, so we're currently investigating the human's description and escape route…"
"I'll go myself."
She strode straight outside and headed for the interrogation chamber, set well apart from the Agents' quarters.
The interrogation chamber was where they usually dragged humans to play with or torture them, so it naturally stood at a distance from the barracks and other work facilities. Dragonkin senses were sharp; they simply could not tolerate the stench of human waste or blood near their living spaces.
Zeronia yanked the barred door open and found herself facing a trembling Dragonkin who looked utterly baffled as to why he was even in the interrogation chamber.
"Report."
The single heavy word struck like a hammer. The Dragonkin stammered out his answer.
Suddenly the humans' Guard Captain had claimed that their own soldiers were turning into Dragonkin. Then a man who clearly was not part of the Border Defense Corps had smashed through the fence and charged them with a sword.
The story was jumbled enough to give her a mild headache, but the essentials were clear enough.
"The wounds?"
The priest who had been bandaging the soldier answered that there was nothing to worry about.
"Plenty of cuts, but none life-threatening. Doesn't seem like a particularly skilled human."
"…Is that so."
A flicker of unease passed through Zeronia, but she set it aside. Capturing the human came first.
If they lost him and he slipped into Dragonkin territory, the search would become a nightmare—and the responsibility would land squarely on her shoulders.
"Fine. First we—"
She was about to order the Agent who had followed her to take immediate measures when a heavy thud sounded outside.
The priest wondered if fruit had simply fallen from one of the trees they cultivated. Zeronia, Heretic Inquisitor, seized her halberd at once.
That was not the sound of mere fruit.
"Sentry?"
She called softly to the guard posted outside the interrogation chamber.
Only the fierce wind and the lamp's swaying shadow answered.
"Sentry?"
Crack!
The moment she called again, something snapped with a sharp report.
The Agent, finally grasping the gravity of the situation, started forward with weapon in hand. Zeronia stopped him.
The enemy was already coming this way. Better to wait inside and ambush him than rush out to fight.
"Priest, fall back."
"May the Dragon's Breath be with you all."
The priest, facing his first true emergency, hurriedly clasped his hands and began to pray.
Every Dragonkin in the room felt the thick killing intent seeping closer from beyond the door.
Silence stretched taut in the darkness, ratcheting the tension higher and higher.
An enemy who did not even allow the sound of breathing—like a ghost.
Is this really a human?
The thought that it might be some undead instead had barely formed when a palm-sized hole opened in the damp wooden ceiling. A hooked rope shot down, snared the neck of the Agent standing beside Zeronia, and yanked him straight up toward the rafters.
"Ghk! Guh! Kuaagh!"
Suddenly hanging as if from a gallows, the Agent thrashed wildly in midair.
Dragonkin might share roughly the same build as humans, but they weighed twice as much—yet he was lifted as easily as a chicken by the neck until the back of his skull struck the ceiling.
"Hold still! Hold still!"
The halberd was useless for cutting the rope. Zeronia drew the dagger at her belt, but the Agent's violent thrashing kept her from getting close.
Just as the Agent began to lose consciousness and foam at the mouth, the tension on the rope suddenly released and dropped him.
"Cough! Haaah!"
He clutched his throat and rolled across the floor.
Why?
It was a relief the Agent had survived—but why hadn't the attacker finished him?
No—more importantly…
"Wasn't he outside the door?"
That bone-chilling killing intent had definitely slipped through the cracks of the door and pricked her skin. And it was still there, undiminished.
Fearing a second intruder, she wrenched the door open—
Only a few collapsed Dragonkin lay outside. Nothing else.
Yet the moment the door opened, the killing intent grew even fiercer.
Zeronia's instincts screamed that the mass of murderous aura was right behind her. She twisted and swung the halberd in a great arc—
"Ah… aah…"
The man was not behind her.
More precisely, she had misread the situation.
The killing intent had been so vast she had assumed it had seized her from behind.
That was not the case.
Whether he had dropped from the ceiling or not, the hole was now larger. The priest and the Agent lay unconscious; the escaped Dragonkin was gone.
Dragonkin found it hard to judge human ages, but Zeronia had her own methods. The absence of wrinkles told her he was young.
Black hair and a murderous aura so fierce it looked exactly like the reaper the young Dragonkin sometimes whispered about—the one who came to harvest lives.
Whenever she heard such talk, the rigid Zeronia always answered the same way:
The dragons protect us. What is there to fear?
But standing face-to-face with something so similar, certainty flooded every nerve: the moment she dropped to her knees to pray, her head would already be gone.
"Plenty of wounds but nothing life-threatening, so his skill isn't that great?"
The priest's words came back like a boomerang and pierced her own heart. A self-mocking smile twisted her lips.
In mathematical terms, the formula had been correct. Every number and sign had been placed exactly where it belonged.
Only the calculation itself had been wrong.
Many wounds yet no threat to life meant the opposite: the opponent was skilled enough to inflict that many wounds without ever endangering a life.
"You. What is your purpose?"
Even through the fear, Zeronia forced out a voice full of authority. It was the only defiance left to her.
The man seemed willing to talk. He turned slowly and looked at her.
"There are humans turning into Dragonkin. Do you know anything about that?"
A voice like ice.
The dignified tone she had managed earlier now felt like a child's play-acting; his quiet words carried a chill as if they had stepped onto a snowfield.
"…"
Zeronia could not answer.
At first it was simply the killing intent and that trembling, freezing voice that stole her words—but the truth was she genuinely knew nothing about it.
"I see. You don't know."
Like a judge pronouncing a death sentence.
The voice that softly filled the interrogation chamber made Zeronia swing her halberd in desperation—
She never even properly grasped what had happened before she blacked out.
The Dragon's Border was vast, yet the number of outposts was not particularly large.
Still, every single outpost was assigned its own Heretic Inquisitor without fail.
And late that night, a man's voice rang through the Heretic Inquisitors' emergency communicators.
It announced that the Dragon Horn Outpost—which could rightly be called the very front line—and the Dragonkin who guarded it had been overrun by a human.
"There's only one demand. Exchange information for the hostages."
Amazingly, the one who had used the emergency communicator to deliver every word of that message was none other than the human himself.