Volume 1, Episode 4
“Human.”
Blanconia was the name of the snowy lair.
Since ancient times, humans had revered the dragon race, beings endowed with the power of the gods, and would come to the lair to build temples, offer sacrifices, or pray.
The problem was that the place had not been used for well over a hundred years. Winter Bell had refused to bring winter here in earnest.
Seherbian leaned on his scepter and tilted his head slightly.
Then is this that person’s prayer? A human came to find me?
For a moment, a silence too strange to name stretched on.
“Master?”
When the guardian Liliana called him with an anxious expression, Seherbian finally opened his mouth.
“Yeah. Mm-hm.”
“……That’s a pretty deflated answer.”
Liliana looked up at her master, looking dejected. His trademark sunset-colored eyes still seemed languid and half-asleep.
“You’re not surprised?”
“Not really.”
Seherbian answered slowly.
“Humans have always come looking for miracles. If they’re desperate enough to be in pain, anyone can come to a temple and pray. There’s nothing strange about that.”
“But a human came to you on their own! Humans lately haven’t had the right—or the will—to do that.”
“Yeah, I guess that part is a little odd.”
“……Really?”
He said it was odd, yet there wasn’t a trace of liveliness on Seherbian’s face. His sunset eyes, sunk low with boredom, gave off a faint, quiet gleam.
So the owner of the temple they came to in such desperate faith had to be me, of all people.
There were four seasonal dragons, each called Bell.
Every Bell possessed a different authority, and because they were seasonal dragons, their temperaments also diverged sharply.
For example, those who wanted the promise of life would seek out Seedbell, the guardian dragon of spring; those who sought power would go to Asubell; and those in search of wisdom would find Akibell.
And as for Winter Bell……
What they’ve always wished from me has been the same.
Though they feared the power of winter and had driven it into the farthest darkness, it wasn’t as if no one had ever come to Winter Bell at all.
O Winter Bell, guardian dragon of winter. O Winter Bell, who leads all life into a brutal death.
Bring our enemies to ruin.
Please grant us the most miserable and cruel curse.
Winter Bell recalled the faces of those who had come to the dragon temple one by one. In the hearts of the people who bowed before him lived filthy desires. Everyone who sought Winter Bell longed for another’s death and destruction.
And Seherbian was thoroughly sick of that foul, muddy hunger.
There had been only one person—one and only one—whose wish had been different from the rest.
A woman who was both the supreme monarch and the mother of a child.
She had caught Winter Bell’s interest no less than twice, and yet in the end her fate had…….
“Aren’t you going?”
While he was lost in thought, Liliana, who was soft-hearted to a fault, blinked her large eyes in uncertainty. Listening to human prayers and watching over the world was a duty given to every dragon race.
But the master she served had not the slightest shred of motivation for it.
“Who knows.”
Even after hearing that a human had come looking for him, Winter Bell remained lethargic.
He didn’t want to meet people in the first place. He had finally holed himself up safely inside the snowy lair—why were they coming to find him again?
Seherbian truly wanted to be left alone.
“Master……”
Turning his head, he saw Liliana gazing nervously at his darkened sunset eyes. Too lazy to explain that he wasn’t angry, Seherbian let out a small sigh.
“Let’s go, Liliana.”
He had nowhere else to be, anyway.
I may as well hear out one last prayer before I leave.
A prayer he had found so endlessly tiresome—yet once he thought about departing, it somehow felt almost freeing.
At his merciful answer, color returned to Liliana’s face.
With the white crow perched on his shoulder, he looked back down at Mimir. The message that had arrived earlier was still there.
Save me.
Just one sentence.
Unlike all the messages before, which had been packed with scattered keywords, this one solitary, desperate plea had formed clear letters and shone before his eyes. The words made of ice crystals turned slowly in the air, like a wind-up music box set in motion.
Seherbian stared at it with impassive eyes, then swung his scepter through the empty air.
“Mimir, open the Door.”
At the command, a fierce blizzard rushed and gathered around the scepter in a sudden swirl.
The next instant, an ice-blue door appeared before Seherbian with a heavy thud, as if it had fallen straight out of the sky. Snow-laced wind burst outward in its wake, violently tangling his hair and the hems of his clothes.
The name of this magic was the Door. One of the powers granted to the guardian dragons, it allowed spatial movement to any place they desired at any time. Of course, it could only take them to a location they had visited before and recorded the coordinates for.
“Blanconia, in front of the praying foreigner.”
The moment he specified the destination, the tightly shut ice door began to open.
Ka-ga-ga-gak—
Ice scraped against ice with a grating shriek. As the heavy door swung wide, glittering ice particles scattered into the air. Beyond the wavering barrier, an unfamiliar scene came into view.
“Hiiik! Master!”
Sure enough, the Door had been precise.
The instant it opened, Seherbian and Liliana found the foreigner.
More accurately, they found a brown-haired girl collapsed in the cold snowfield.
“A person diedyyyy!”
“……Hm? I don’t think she’s dead yet.”
Unlike the white crow Liliana, who was flapping frantically around the area in a panic, Seherbian only tilted his head, calm as ever.
A child?
Strangely enough, the one who had come looking for Winter Bell was still a minor.
But more than that, her face was pale and her lips had turned blue, and she was trembling all over; it was obvious at a glance that she was in no healthy condition.
Spinning his scepter lightly in his hand, Seherbian glanced down at the girl lying beyond the door. Then he crouched beside the threshold. Liliana fluttered down onto his shoulder and cried out in a panicked voice.
“She must not have eaten or drunk anything for a really long time. She’s starving and freezing and shaking badly. Master, you have to take her back to the village right away……!”
“Let’s hear why she came first, then think about it.”
“This is no time for that! This person’s life signs are so faint it’s amazing she’s still alive. Right now she’s basically no different from dead—if you leave her alone……!”
“If she’s basically no different from dead, then she’s dead.”
Seherbian replied in a flat tone, not at all moved. He didn’t care whether this young human who had come looking for him lived or died. Liliana’s beak trembled as she stared at her master, who showed not a shred of seriousness about his duty.
“You need to hurry!”
When a guardian dragon ignores a prayer, its divine power rapidly wanes. This was not the same as merely slacking off and neglecting work out of laziness. The human collapsed before his eyes had entered Blanconia to seek the guardian dragon Winter Bell, carrying a prayer of desperate faith.
If he ignored that prayer and the human who had come to the dragon temple died, the backlash would cause him to lose a great deal of divine power. And a guardian dragon who gradually lost divine power…….
Fwaaaat!
In an instant, Seherbian was wrapped in light and, in the blink of an eye, took on the form of a massive dragon, spreading his wings.
A deep crimson mane, grown along his silver spine, streamed softly in the air. The moment his dragon body descended upon the spot, the freezing air that had encircled the area came to a sudden halt.
As the silver lineage desired, snow, ice, and bitter cold vanished all at once.
As if time itself had been stopped, the cold disappeared and the blizzard no longer blew. In the hush that followed, clean sunlight reflected off the snow and glittered brightly.
The collapsed girl let out a small groan and slowly lifted her eyelids. A hazy gaze, teetering on the edge of death, gradually came into focus.
“……A dragon?”
Shock so profound it seemed to steal her breath away came over her.
“Ah…… ahhh…….”
Having come face-to-face with the being she had yearned for so desperately, the girl only stared, mouth agape. Right before her eyes, a sacred dragon made of silver looked down at her without a word. His tousled crimson mane, even his hard claws that did not sink into the snow, were all wondrous beyond belief.
“Benevolent guardian dragon. I…… am Kisha Hartney.”
Even as she was dying, the girl seeking the guardian dragon breathed out hot little puffs of air. Her eyes, crumpled as though she were about to cry, overflowed with joy.
Her trembling fingertips drifted weakly through the air. The child barely managed to hold out a hand toward Seherbian, and with desperate sincerity, she moved her lips.
“Please, please…….”
The sunset-colored eyes looked quietly at the girl.
“Please let go of your anger.”
Winter Bell, who had been listening in curiosity to what kind of wish the human who had staked her life to come this far might make, found his expression turning incredulous.
Thud.
In a matter of moments, the human had spent all her strength and planted her face in the frozen ground, losing consciousness.
Seherbian tilted his head in front of the collapsed girl.
“……I’m not angry.”
The white crow that had flown up around Seherbian’s absurdly relaxed figure circled him with flapping wings, scattering feathers as it went.
“Master! At this rate she’s really going to die!”
“All right, all right.”
His reply was heavy with irritation, but unlike his tone, he immediately took something out and floated it in the air.
Liliana’s eyes flew wide when she recognized the familiar cloth sack.
The Spring’s Sunlight Bag!
It was the second bag of sunlight left after he had scattered one portion on the winter butterfly tree earlier. Seherbian opened the cloth pouch containing spring sunlight and shook it generously over the fallen guest.
Fwaaaah!
Warm, fluffy little bundles of orange sunlight born of spring settled lightly over the area like dandelion fluff. Wherever the spring light touched, the cold vanished in an instant and warmth took root.
It was spring. Unlike the winter sun that felt so far away, this was a light overflowing with life.
Amid the brightening surroundings, the girl remained unconscious, hanging limp without so much as a stir. Liliana hurried to her side and, sensing the breath coming from her nose, made her eyes sparkle.
“She’s alive! Hah. Th-thank goodness.”
As expected of the vital energy of spring, which governed life, its healing speed was remarkably fast.
Her breathing had already returned to normal, and the skin that had been stiff and white quickly regained its color. With the immediate danger of Winter Bell’s divine rank dropping now eased, Liliana let out a long, relieved breath.
By contrast, Seherbian looked down at the child with a flat expression.
“I went to the trouble of healing her, so why isn’t she waking up?”
“Oh. Maybe she fainted.”
She had simply been so exhausted after wandering Blanconia, where the snow had piled up for ages, that she had lost consciousness. She wasn’t dead. Hearing Liliana’s report, Seherbian muttered with a serious face.
“Maybe I should just leave her…….”
“What? If you do that, she’ll really freeze to death!”
Seherbian glanced down at his feet. Even the spring sunlight warmly shining on the child below would soon run out of power.
Normally, people turn back out of the snowy field before it gets this bad.
No matter how desperate a wish might be, who didn’t value their own life?
Most of those who entered the snowfields to seek the Winter Dragon Temple ended up fleeing in a panic like rabbits chased by monsters, their whole bodies shaking beneath a terrifying cold that swallowed every last bit of warmth.
But this girl was different. Whatever had happened, if her wish was important enough to make her gamble her life, then even if she was only a child, he couldn’t simply ignore it. She had gone so far as to summon a dragon.
“Haah, what a pain…….”
At last, another habitual sigh slipped from Winter Bell’s mouth.
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