The One Who Tamed Dragons
"Honestly, I can't say for certain. At this point it's nothing more than a strong hunch."
After giving Llewellyn a brief rundown of exactly which mine they were talking about, Arendt added that much with a shrug.
Llewellyn stared down at the floor, his expression grave.
"But the possibility is certainly there. A creature obsessive enough to seal even its grimoires against removal — that has to be a dragon."
"Are you suggesting that mine was once a dragon's dwelling, then?"
"If it was... no, not a dwelling. More of a summer home, I'd say."
When Count Stadler posed the question, Llewellyn gave a slight shake of his head.
"You said it isn't all that far from the capital, yes? Humans have lived in this region in droves since long before the war. There'd be no reason for a dragon to build a lair anywhere people tramped through on a daily basis. However—"
"You believe there's ample chance it was used as a laboratory, Your Highness?"
"Precisely that."
This time it was Arendt who nodded to the Count.
"These are things we hadn't given any thought to until now, but perhaps we'll find a new clue there after all."
"Hoo... now this is an unexpected development."
Merchant Leader Neumann let out a low sigh of astonishment as well.
Though the research had been underway for quite some time, the identity of the ruins' original owner remained an unsolved riddle.
Laios, who had been listening in silence, finally posed a question of his own.
"Count, have the ancient texts from the site been fully analyzed?"
"No, a little remains. Several of the books are written in a script none of us have ever seen, so my assistants and I are working to decipher them — but I'm afraid it will take more time yet."
There might be records of the dragon race left behind in those pages.
Count Stadler's eyes flashed.
"Then I shall redouble my efforts!"
"On your way back, bring Prince Llewellyn with you. And Neumann — lend me Warren for a while. That's fine, isn't it?"
At Arendt's sudden remark, Neumann blinked.
"Yes, of course, that's no trouble at all... but might I ask the reason?"
"He may not look it, but he's a prince of an entire nation. If he got assassinated while wandering around inside our Empire, things would become very awkward for us. And with Warren at his side, coordination with the Neumann Guild can happen that much faster."
Warren was useful in all sorts of ways.
Convinced by the logic, Warren bowed his head toward Llewellyn.
"I'll be in your care, Your Highness."
"No, no — the pleasure is mine..."
Unaccustomed to matters proceeding at such breakneck speed, Llewellyn nodded along in a daze.
"I'll say this up front: we're in a situation where a counterattack could come at any moment. The cult took a severe beating, yes, but there's no question they remain a force to be reckoned with."
Laios, quiet until now, finally spoke up.
"Danger may find you. And Warren fled from a guild under the cult's thumb — if the two of you travel together, you may stand out all the more. Exercise the utmost caution."
"As the Commander says, we must ensure the cult doesn't catch wind of Prince Llewellyn moving with us for the time being. It probably won't stay hidden for long, mind you."
Having agreed so readily, Arendt then found the Commander shooting him an anxious look.
"Still, lie low for a while yet. Before long, they'll realize it isn't just the Empire — other nations have begun turning against them too."
"I see. So they're the rat cornered in the poison jar, are they?"
"That's how it looks right now, but it won't go that smoothly. Think about who's attached to them."
"..."
Cantares shut his mouth.
Dragons.
In the end, the conversation had circled back to the original agenda of the meeting.
"So we're to go find this dragon, then?"
"The bloodlines may stick together, but dragons are thorough individualists, you know."
With a careless tilt of his head, Arendt continued.
"I've no idea how many dragons are even left, but I refuse to believe every last one of them has attached itself to the Cult of Cernion."
"Then what — you mean to negotiate?"
"If possible?"
At that breezy reply, the office sank into silence once more.
Tracking down a dragon that might not even exist, and then negotiating with it besides — it was an absurd proposition. And yet, coming from Arendt's mouth, the words carried a strange weight, as if they might not be absurd at all.
"Do you... have something in mind?"
"Nothing certain — but recently I gathered various materials and did some digging."
Count Stadler's translations, the temple, the antiquarian bookshops, the imperial library itself... there was no archive Arendt hadn't ransacked.
"They say almost nothing survives from the war era, but folktales still get passed down, don't they?"
"They do."
The first emperor, Hero Cahn. And the horde of the evil god he had driven out.
"Ever heard this one? The tale of how Hero Cahn and a dragon matched blades in a contest of strength."
"Well, I've heard it, but... that's an old fairy tale. Not even a particularly famous one. The records handed down in the royal family say... ah."
Cantares, who had been answering absently, soon caught his own mistake.
The imperial records were far from complete. A fair amount remained concerning the Sword of the Broken Heart, but the story of God Cernion had been scrubbed away with surgical thoroughness — and that said everything.
Besides, this was no longer an age where one could dismiss something as a musty old fairy tale. No one had ever imagined that an evil god dismissed as mere legend would descend upon this era — until it happened.
Count Stadler cut in.
"The dragon bone appears in that tale as well. The duel never reached a conclusion, but the dragon was so impressed by Hero Cahn that it became his friend. As a token of that bond, it is said to have carved weapons from its own body and presented them to him."
Now that they had actually recovered artifacts made of dragon bone, it was a story that could no longer be overlooked.
Laios let out a short groan.
"So that's what you were doing, shut up in your room for days on end..."
"So I went looking for similar stories. Even the materials I received from the temple mention dragons."
After pausing briefly, as if choosing his words, Arendt spoke plainly.
"Dragons, it says, are a race that keeps close company with the gods."
"...Close with the gods?"
At the news, wholly unprecedented to his ears, Llewellyn's eyes went round.
"It's a passage from a book the children newly brought into the temple read. A copy of a record left by some priest who wandered the continent in ages past, they said... though among the clergy it seems to be dismissed as nothing more than an old tale."
Arendt shrugged.
"The only being capable of taming the haughty, self-important dragon is the great god — so it goes. Which god that might be isn't properly recorded, which is a bit of a shame."
This was a temple of the Luce Religion, after all. The god referenced was almost certainly Luce.
"It's already confirmed that dragons have attached themselves to the Cernion cult — which means there must be at least one or two who sided with God Luce back in the day. Those are the ones we need to find."
"Find them, inform them of the current situation, and ask for their cooperation because the world may once more be in danger?"
"Not even close."
At Cantares's question, Arendt clicked his tongue — tch — and declared brazenly:
"The bastards who screwed you all over are lifting their heads and crawling back out of the dirt, and you're asking whether we should just sit there like idiots?"
"..."
Truly... his personality is staggering, even on repeat viewing.
While everyone wore complicated expressions and held their tongues, Warren quietly murmured:
"Whoever it turns out to be — first we kill the fool who went to negotiate."
At the hand of an enraged dragon.
Clap.
With a single clap, Arendt cleared the air.
"Piecing together everything we've gathered so far, we can infer a reason why the dragon on their side hasn't surfaced until now."
"It fears its own kind involving themselves in this?"
"Most likely."
Arendt nodded at Laios's words.
"Therefore: the other members of the dragon race have, until now, likely known nothing at all about how the world actually turns. That ceases to be true going forward."
"So this was your design all along. All that talk of provocation and whatnot."
The Crown Prince burst into a dry chuckle.
Displaying the dragon at the Founding Festival to announce to the world the evil god's descent and the dragon's emergence — and then, on top of that, parading forth a single hero to stand against them.
He had assumed it was all simple, brute spite... when in truth it had been a colossal lure, cast to hook a dragon.
"Well, partly for the ride. They might even reach out to us first, who knows. In any case — it won't be easy."
Saying so, Arendt flicked a sidelong glance toward Llewellyn.
Llewellyn, arms crossed, had been staring silently at the floor — then he spat out one short sentence.
"No, I've got a feel for where to start."
As expected. Toss him that much and he'll figure out the rest on his own.
"Then we leave it in your hands. Any supplies you need, request them through the Neumann Guild. I'll be covering the costs myself."
"You're footing the bill?"
"I have plenty of money. You can't very well dip into the imperial treasury for work that has to stay secret, can we?"
The Neumann Guild's newest venture had hit the jackpot, and Arendt's coffers had swelled right along with it. On top of that, he had enough magic stones on hand to sell off that they overflowed both hands.
Cantares organized the discussion and issued his orders.
"That matter goes to Arendt and Merchant Leader Neumann. Count — you'll assist Prince Llewellyn while continuing your analysis of the dragon bone."
"Yes, understood. We'll proceed without a hitch."
"One moment — this has been bothering me for a while now."
Raising his hand slyly, the prince put on an awkward smile.
"You mentioned dragon bone earlier too, didn't you? Don't tell me you've already gotten your hands on that as well..."
"Ah."
Come to think of it, Llewellyn knew nothing whatsoever about the artifacts. The materials circulated at this meeting had omitted every last item relating to them.
"You can't possibly mean..."
It had been a deliberate decision, made out of fear that anyone coveting those treasures might act rashly. Thanks to it, Vincent and Blake had been described only as "masked wielders of strange abilities, formidable in strength" — nothing more.
Count Stadler answered the prince with a vaguely enigmatic smile.
Which was to say: yes.
When the prince's jaw dropped and his gaze darted between the Count, Arendt, and the Crown Prince, Cantares spoke with visible reluctance.
"Hm. It seems we had best share the proper information after all."
And so the Crown Prince recounted, briefly, a version of events somewhat different from the public story — the full truth of the battles waged thus far, and what had become of the artifacts seized along the way.
Exactly how high Llewellyn jumped — well, no one needed to see it to know.
That evening.
Too restless to sit still, Llewellyn departed for the mine together with the Count, and the imperial palace grew quiet once more.
And Arendt, for the first time in a long while, faced Laios across the Crown Prince's private training ground.
"Any trouble moving now?"
"Since when did you last ask?"
Arendt answered curtly and drew his sword.
As the apprentice knight's blade slid smoothly free and leveled toward him, Laios likewise drew without ceremony.
"Will it be all right?"
"What will?"
"Handing the artifact Blake carried over to Prince Llewellyn."
Once Count Stadler completed his analysis, Llewellyn was to borrow the dragon bone artifact. Everyone present had agreed to the arrangement.
"We've sent the man into danger, so it's only right he carry one more means of protecting himself. I did mention this earlier — if he dies a stranger's death in some far corner of the world, the one in a difficult position is me."
After all, it was Arendt himself who had dragged the prince into this.
But that was not the answer Laios had wanted.
"Do you trust him?"
"My, what an out-of-nowhere question."
"I'm not doubting your judgment at this late hour. But I am, as you so often say, an absurd idealist and an inflexible stickler for principle — so ask it I must."
...So this man holds grudges too, does he?
Arendt had always taken him for a simple, guileless protagonist — but lately, he kept catching flashes of something almost rebellious underneath.
Arendt leveled a mildly exasperated look at Laios.
"Does it matter?"
"I'd rather not suspect anyone if I can help it. I have the bad habit of trusting people too easily."
"I know. It's also the Commander's single greatest flaw."
"..."
The blade-sharp reply made Laios flinch.
"...I've been put to shame. But you are not like me. That's precisely what puzzles me — why you shared such detailed information with the prince, and pressed for his cooperation so hard at that."
"Because I need him."
Once again, without a flicker of hesitation, Arendt replied.
"Letting a useful card sit idle in your hand is a waste, isn't it? And I've never trusted him. Not once."
The apprentice knight, standing insolently askew, glared at his Commander with open dissatisfaction.
"Why else would I have sent Warren along with him?"
"What?"
At the wholly unexpected remark, Laios made a foolish sound.