Dragon's Blood
Dragon's Blood
The building was half-shattered, barely recognizable. From what remained of the rooftop, a figure plunged—falling through the air with two guns strapped to each arm, firing in a wild staccato.
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
The barrage rained down as the figure dropped, each round packing enough punch to pierce even a Dragon-kin's reinforced hide. Tiyamal had been threading through cover to avoid the worst of it; the instant the volley broke, he slid out from behind the wreckage.
He stopped in a skid, bow already raised and drawn. An arrow rested on the string.
The shaft was the length of a short spear. The bowstring that launched it was forged of steel, and when it snapped forward, the sound was deafening.
THOOOM!
The arrow tore through the air. The gun-wielding priest twisted mid-flight, narrowly evading the shaft, and hit the ground with a scrape of boots.
A pair of pistols leveled on one side. A bow on the other. The weapons they aimed at each other were nothing short of monstrous.
Priest and master faced each other across the distance, their ranged weapons steady and their sunken gazes locked.
"I will not give you time to draw another arrow."
The priest's voice carried a mechanical rasp. Tiyamal cocked the horns near his brow, a flicker of mild surprise crossing his face.
So it can speak after all. With that look, he rested a hand on his quiver. The priest kept one eye on Tiyamal while the other swept across the corpses of his fallen brethren.
Every last one had been killed by a single arrow through the core. One clean hit, and they had never moved again.
The priests farther off were in much the same state. Some had been torn in half by sheer brute force no human could possess. Others lay punctured through the exact seams of their armor—bodies with their cores skewered clean through.
Three priests remained. Two would be buying time. The "Gunslinger" had to finish Tiyamal quickly and regroup.
"This is the end."
The priest muttered it like a mantra—whether to himself or to Tiyamal, it was impossible to tell.
Tiyamal, his face utterly blank, kept his hand on his quiver and answered flatly.
"Up until now, this old man has never missed a target he intended to hit."
The massive Dragon-kin twisted his planted bow, angling it askew as he spoke. The Gunslinger's mechanical eyebrow twitched.
Hadn't the old lizard just missed a moment ago? The priest had never been one to hold his tongue, and the jab slipped out before he could stop it.
"Is that so? My apologies for ruining your streak."
Not that there would be any chance to redeem it. The Gunslinger leveled both pistols at Tiyamal, ready to spit fire at the slightest twitch, and Tiyamal merely watched him for a moment before a small, dry laugh escaped him.
"You are an idiot."
A low chuckle. An ominous pronouncement. Before the priest could process it, something hammered down from above.
CRRRACK!
An arrow punched straight through the crown of his skull and burst out below. The priest's arms went slack, his guns drifting off-target.
Only then did understanding land. The old man's words—up until now—had included the present.
The priest had no chance to scream in horror before the bowstring was drawn again, a fresh arrow already seated.
"You're a tolerable shot yourself, but..."
The steel string groaned as it was pulled back. Something lethal gathered at full draw.
"You've got no soul!"
The shout rang out. The arrow flew. A hit no one could evade. The priest never even managed a cry before his core was pierced through. The metal fragments of his body scattered, and another soul guttered out among them.
As Tiyamal finished the priest, Angie and Fay emerged from their own positions—one from behind a collapsed heap of rubble, the other from the upper floor of a building that was marginally less wrecked.
Angie held a priest's severed head. Fay carried a gouged-out core.
"Huh? What? I thought I finished first," Angie said.
"Fay is stronger than Angie."
"No, I'm definitely stronger. Can you break steel with your hands?"
Behind the bickering girls, Tiyamal's expression turned somber.
There were no more priests left to block their path. The problem was that going to join the others now felt far too late.
The thunderous sounds that had been shaking the air until moments ago had fallen utterly silent. The silence unsettled him, and from that unease, his mind conjured the worst possible outcome.
Aslan and the Dragon-king had fought. The Dragon-king had won. Aslan was dead.
Imagining the worst and preparing for it was, for a Warrior Chief, practically a foundational virtue.
Tiyamal glanced sidelong at the squabbling girls and turned the thought over.
If Aslan was dead, what was he supposed to do? Follow the Dragon-king? Or honor Aslan's wishes and fight the Dragon-king?
Aslan had broken him out of prison and granted him a pardon. That was why Tiyamal was still alive. But it didn't mean he owed the man every last breath of his life. Even by the code of loyalty, he had no obligation to go that far.
Yet siding with the Dragon-king felt just as wrong. Wrestling with the discomfort, he approached the girls.
"Enough with the squabbling. Let's move. Aslan may well need our help."
He'd spoken without full conviction, and the uncertainty made his words trail off. Angie and Fay traded puzzled looks but followed him anyway.
They slipped out of the ruined building and made their way down the empty streets toward the source of the earlier explosions. Every step was dogged by anxiety—and by the watching eyes of Dragon-kin who had crept out to see what was happening.
Mercifully, the distance was short, so the scrutiny didn't last long. The misfortune was that the time left to agonize over his choice was even shorter.
Tiyamal stopped, pressed his back to a wall, and flared his scales. A faint silhouette registered against his senses.
Recognizing that the shape was barely moving, he let out a low huff and opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was Angie. Her scarlet hair was clotted with dried blood, and she was wiping fresh red from under her nose with the back of her hand.
The girl had been scrubbing at the blood, and when she caught his gaze, she shot him a sulky look.
"What."
"...If Aslan lost and the Dragon-king is still alive—what will you do?"
"The Dragon-king? What? Why would the Dragon-king be here?"
Unlike Fay or Tiyamal, who had grasped the truth, Angie's senses weren't nearly as sharp. All she'd registered was the sound of explosions and the dust pluming into the sky. She pouted a little as she answered.
"Besides, there's no way Aslan lost—"
"I'm speaking hypothetically. And... Aslan would want you to prepare for the worst. Think for yourself and answer."
Tiyamal wasn't certain of the right path, so he had asked Angie—the one who had been with Aslan the longest. Fay was clearly not normal; asking her would've been dubious at best.
"If it came to that. What would you do?"
Angie clamped her mouth shut, her expression turning uncomfortable. Emotion flickered sharply across her face before she scowled and answered.
"Does it matter? If we just get to Aslan and help him, it won't come to that!"
She was evading. As far as Tiyamal could tell, the girl simply refused to even entertain the possibility of Aslan's defeat. She was rejecting a sight she couldn't bear to imagine.
Fay, however, saw things differently. The Elf spoke in that chillingly blank tone she occasionally used.
"If Aslan is dead, I will kill everyone."
There was no anger or hatred in her voice—just a calm, cold statement. And with that, she sprang lightly off her bare feet.
"Let's go."
With a soft tap of landing, the girl bounded between the walls of two buildings and vanished. Tiyamal stared after her for a moment before rising.
He let out a pained grunt, scraped at the scales on his jaw, and lifted his bow.
One thing, at least, Tiyamal knew for certain.
Without Aslan, this party couldn't endure.
The same feeling he'd experienced during Aslan's disappearance was sharper now than ever. The Dragon-kin and the girl moved on, vaulting over debris, pushing forward into a scarred landscape thick with dust and devastation.
I hope you're alive too, whelp.
He murmured it inwardly as he drew his bow and leveled it. At the center of the devastation where the explosions had ceased, something was writhing. Past that squirming silhouette—unmistakably—stood Aslan.
Tiyamal threw an arrow onto the string and nearly loosed it before he froze.
The silhouette was familiar.
"Ereta?"
It was the Elf girl who spoke first. While Tiyamal hung back, watching warily with his bow drawn, Fay ran straight for the woman.
"Ereta, what are you—"
Hearing her name, the woman slowly turned her head. The tracks of tears stood vivid on her face, her expression crumpled into a mask of grief. Cruel burn marks covered her hands.
The situation slammed into Fay's awareness.
The girl's pupils trembled as she sucked in a breath.
"Ah... Aslan..."
The man lying there was anything but fine.
Burns spread across one arm. His clothes were shredded and split. Between the gashes, sticky blood oozed out.
His left arm had been shattered to the point where only a shard of bone jutted from near the shoulder joint. His chest rose and fell intermittently, barely breathing. Both eyes, his nose, his mouth—all were stained a red so deep it was nearly black. His unfocused pupils were veiled beneath fluttering eyelids, twitching with nothing resembling consciousness.
It was a horrific sight. Aslan didn't even react. He was beyond awareness.
Ereta laid her hand on his chest. Strange patterns traced across her fingers, mana bleeding along the lines as it flowed from her spine into his torso. Each time she did it, Aslan's breathing flared shallowly before subsiding again.
"Wh-what is this... why— no— what the— fuck, what happened?! We need to— to treat him—"
Angie could do nothing but stare. Bewildered, she spun in place, searching wildly for anything that could help, though there was no chance a girl who couldn't read would identify a remedy in this chaos.
While the girl stammered, looking ready to bolt somewhere at any moment, Ereta bit down hard on her lip and continued working the mana tattoo.
The mana tattoo: Valor of the Bijo.
A mark from the ancient imperial hero known as the Cowardly Bijo, it allowed the bearer to trade wounds inflicted for stolen life force—and to seize monstrous strength in return. Ordinarily, the tattoo could only drain life. But driven by her own genius and desperation, Ereta had found a way to reverse the flow.
Using the method she had discovered, she was pouring fragments of her own life into Aslan.
It was like pouring water into a bottomless vessel—utterly futile. The vitality she channeled in came spilling back out. The color bled from Ereta's face until her skin turned a bloodless white.
Even Tiyamal, who had no real knowledge of mana tattoos, could grasp what was happening. By some means he didn't understand, this woman was feeding her own life into Aslan to keep him breathing.
He seized her shoulder in alarm, meaning to stop her.
"Wait, stop! You'll kill yourself!"
"What does it matter!"
He flinched. This was a woman who never so much as raised her voice, and she had just shaken off his hand and snarled at him.
Ereta's words came out thick with tears.
"I— I'm... if I don't at least do this... I'm useless..."
She didn't even finish the thought—the words didn't quite seem to know what she was trying to say—and kept pouring her life into Aslan. The vitality spilled away as fast as she gave it, but she didn't hesitate, dying by inches.
Despair written on her face, she poured and poured without end.
Tiyamal exhaled heavily, rubbing the scales on his forehead.
The situation was chaos. To get Aslan to a healer, someone would have to carry him—lift him, drag him—and Tiyamal couldn't imagine Ereta simply allowing that.
Maybe he should knock her unconscious and summon a shaman from the Wing District. The thought was still forming when something came flying from above and landed on the ground with a soft tap.
An Elf-shaped silhouette.
"Squirt?"
The twin swords rang as they cleared their sheaths with a chilling hiss. Tiyamal tensed, then lifted his gaze.
Fay's killing intent, rough and unrestrained, was aimed past the group—in the opposite direction.
"That's him! That's the one who— the Dragon-king—!"
Dragon-kin were flooding through the gaps between buildings. They gripped weapons and were closing in on Aslan's group.
Threats, curses, and shouts of fury rippled through their ranks. Tiyamal's face fell. Fay's eyes flashed, and she yelled.
"Don't come any closer! If you do, I'll kill you all!"
A clear, ringing voice from a young girl. Under any other circumstance, the threat might have sounded cute—but the feral killing intent pouring off her small frame stripped away any trace of cuteness. The approaching Dragon-kin actually hesitated.
It was rare to see a Sword Master take a stance like this. Her blade's edge glittered in the sunlight with a lethality that promised immediate death.
Tiyamal rubbed his forehead and sighed.
Only moments ago, he himself had wondered if he ought to side with the Dragon-king—should the old dragon still be alive.
If someone like him could waver, the reaction of ordinary Dragon-kin—who had no idea their king was a priest—was entirely predictable.
He agonized. Should he draw his bow on his own kinsmen? Was there truly no other path? His eyes slid toward Aslan.
His time with Aslan hadn't been long. But even in that short span, the man had left an indelible impression.
If Aslan were in Tiyamal's place...
If Tiyamal were the one lying broken on that ground...
Aslan wouldn't hesitate. He would fight.
Tiyamal clicked his tongue softly and raised his bow. He drew a fresh arrow, nocked it, and pulled the string back to its limit.
What he had sensed from the Dragon-king earlier was unmistakably the presence of a priest. No—closer to a high priest. The Dragon-king might be the son of a god who had received an Ancient God's divinity, but there was no way he should have been that strong by natural means.
This had to be the kind of high priest they'd only heard rumors about. Aslan could have ignored such an enemy, could have chosen a more advantageous battlefield, and yet he'd fought.
Tiyamal didn't know all the details, but he was certain of one thing.
Aslan had fought to protect people.
A memory surfaced: the words Aslan had spoken when he'd recruited Tiyamal.
He'd said he wanted to make all the world like Belus Alpen—a place where survival wasn't a constant battle, but something taken for granted.
Not empty platitudes. Not lip service. Steadfast sincerity.
He couldn't let a man like that die. The hesitation finally fell away. Tiyamal opened his eyes.
With heavy resolve, he shouted.
"Angie, Ereta! Take Aslan and—!"
The string groaned under the tension, and just as he was about to release it, someone burst through the crowd.
It was a Dragon-kin carrying a shield, backed by a squad of armed humans. Harod Claw.
"Hold! Hold, everyone! Have you even confirmed what happened, and you're already ready to shed blood? Are we, the sons and daughters of the Dragon, such savages?!"
He planted himself between the mob and the wounded man, thrusting his shield out as he shouted. Curses and jeers flew, but Harod merely flinched his brow and stood his ground, defending Aslan.
The armed crowd thrust their weapons menacingly at him. Harod refused to retreat. He shoved his shield forward and knocked the weapons back.
Tiyamal, startled by his younger brother's sudden appearance, closed his mouth and let out a low grunt. The intervention was welcome, but the fury sweeping through the crowd didn't seem likely to subside because of it.
Dragon-kin were warriors from birth. A pack of poor fighters from the Tail District could never hold them back. As the throng pressed slowly forward, Tiyamal began to draw his bow again—but a voice rang out through the press of bodies.
"The young one speaks true. We are not savages."
A voice weathered by age, yet it carried. The elderly Dragon-kin stood tall enough that his head was clearly visible above the crowd. When he spoke, the Dragon-kin around him turned their heads, breath catching in their throats.
"The Council of Elders...!"
As one of them said: they were the elders.
The most revered warriors and shamans of Belus Alpen.
Alongside Heart, the Dragon-king, these Dragon-kin—the Council of Heads—ruled Belus Alpen.
Figures emerged from the crowd around the elders, clad in full armor. Fangs. The Council's direct military unit.
"Lower your weapons, brothers and sisters."
The Dragon-kin nearest the elders, flustered, did as they were told. The elders parted the crowd and approached Aslan's group.
"I said don't come any closer!"
They stopped just short of the snarling Elf girl and her poised blades, and stood regarding the party in silence.
A woman clutching Aslan to her chest, tears streaming down a face locked in despair. An Elf girl aiming killing intent at everyone. A scarlet-haired girl hiding her shock and confusion behind raised fists. And a former Warrior Chief steadying his breath with his bow half-drawn.
Beyond them, the elders studied the unconscious Aslan. They exchanged silent glances and nodded to one another.
The presence of an Ancient God's traces hung thickly around the unconscious man.
It was a presence they had never once sensed from the Dragon-king.
"So, in the end... the Lord of Ten Thousand Weapons has chosen His Warrior."
Only Tiyamal reacted to the cryptic words. As he flinched, one of the elders reached into his robes and withdrew something.
A vial glowing crimson. Tiyamal recognized it immediately.
One of the relics left behind by the God of Fire and Smithing, one of the Ancient Gods.
Dragon's Blood.
A national treasure of Belus Alpen. It was said the dead themselves could be revived with it.