Chapter 9: Just a Dragon
Just as the big one and the little one were about to go to war, the heavy city gate finally opened from the inside.
Only a narrow crack.
Cold wind slipped through. The chains groaned, the wood creaked, and iron scraped against stone.
Zera peeked out through the gap.
She was about to speak, but stopped when she saw what was outside.
Master Kael stood at the gate with his shirt pulled crooked, his face dark, and a little girl wrapped in his cloak held against his chest.
One of his hands was still blocking the little girl’s wandering fingers. The other held her firmly in place.
He looked angry.
He looked awkward.
He looked nothing like the Grand General who could make soldiers stand straight with one glance.
"Master Kael... ah!"
Zera jumped back half a step. The hand holding up her skirt froze.
"What happened to you, Master Kael?"
The moment Kael saw her, his expression changed.
The man who had nearly lost a fight to a hungry hatchling at the city gate vanished.
Now he looked righteous, calm, and utterly innocent.
"Huh? You’re here? Perfect."
He walked through the gate with Puff in his arms and ignored Zera’s stunned face.
"Hurry up. What food do you have? Hand it over. All of it."
"E-Eat...?"
The second Puff heard that word, she let go of Kael’s shirt and turned toward him.
She still did not really know what food meant.
But it sounded much better than "smack your butt."
"It’s the same as that milk you keep yelling about," Kael said, scowling. "Something to fill your stomach."
Then he added, "Dumb dragon."
"Mm..."
Puff puffed out her cheeks and glared at him.
She did not understand every word, but she knew he had called her stupid again.
Sadly, hunger came first.
So she swallowed the complaint.
It stayed in her cheeks instead.
Zera finally came back to herself and looked down at what she was carrying.
"Master Kael, I still have a little cow’s milk, but..."
"Give it here."
Kael took the small iron pail from her.
Milk sloshed inside. A warm, creamy smell rose from it.
Puff’s nose twitched.
She woke up at once.
"Milk... milk!"
Both hands reached out. She leaned from Kael’s arms toward the pail as if she meant to crawl into it.
Kael pulled her back.
"Don’t get excited, idiot. Drink this."
He glanced around and spotted several small bowls near the wall just inside the gate. The guards used them during night duty. They were plain, chipped, and not exactly clean.
Kael picked one up, wiped it with his sleeve, and filled it with milk.
The white surface trembled under the torchlight.
Then he set Puff down on a wooden chair.
It was one of the guards’ chairs, sturdy and rough. Puff was so small that when she sat on it, her feet could not reach the ground.
They dangled in the air.
Kael placed the bowl in front of her, then bent down and fixed the cloak around her.
The cloak was far too big. It nearly swallowed her whole.
One corner had slipped down, so Kael pulled it back up and tucked it near her shoulder so she would not step on it while drinking.
Puff noticed none of this.
Her whole world was the bowl of milk.
She held the rim with both hands.
First, she sniffed it.
Then she lowered her head and licked it once.
The next second, her eyes lit up.
She planted her face near the edge of the bowl and started drinking like her life depended on it.
For a few seconds, no one by the gate spoke.
Zera stood off to the side, watching the little girl in Master Kael’s cloak sit on a guard’s wooden chair and drink milk with her whole face.
Then she looked at Kael.
His face was still sour.
But he made no move to take the cloak back.
Zera had wanted to ask earlier. She had not dared.
Now that Puff had settled down, she stepped closer.
"Master Kae... what is she?"
Kael did not look at her.
He stared down at Puff, who was gripping the bowl with both hands and gulping down milk as if it were the only thing keeping her alive.
His tone was casual, like he was talking about a stray cat he had picked up on the road.
"Her? Nothing special."
He paused, deciding whether this was worth explaining.
"Just a dragon."
Zera nodded.
"A dragon? Oh... okay..."
Then she stopped.
A heartbeat passed.
Her head snapped up.
"Wait—what? A dragon?!"
To most people, dragons belonged to stories.
Old stories.
The kind people lowered their voices for.
Bards sang about them in taverns. Village elders warned children about them by the fire. Even mercenaries who claimed they had seen everything would pause when dragons were mentioned.
Elarion had plenty of dragon tales.
The Holy Church had a few lines about them too.
It said the great dragons descended once every thousand years to perform a sacred ritual known only to their kind.
After that, they would remain on the continent for ten years.
Then they would spread wings large enough to cover the sky and fly toward a place no human had ever reached.
That was all the scripture really said.
The rest came from people’s mouths.
Some said dragon scales were harder than black iron.
Some said dragon breath could burn through a valley.
Some said a dragon could look into a person’s soul.
Over time, the stories grew bigger than the truth.
Dragons stopped sounding like living creatures.
They became distant gods.
People feared them. Worshiped them. Lied about them. Sold fake bones and fake scales and fake maps to fake nests.
But ask those same people what a dragon actually looked like, where it slept, what it ate, or how it lived, and most of them would have no answer.
Almost no one had seen one.
So anyone could say anything.
Some travelers claimed there were dragon bones buried in ancient battlefields, half-hidden under land scorched black by magic.
Others said those bones belonged to some other old monster, and people had simply called them dragon bones because it sounded better.
The Suncrest Empire cared less about those stories than most places.
Suncrest cared about armies.
Borders.
Power.
Victory.
Dragons mattered, of course.
But if they stayed in scripture and tavern songs, they were little more than distant thunder.
Something to respect.
Not something to chase.
Until tonight.
Until Zera saw one with her own eyes.
Sitting on a wooden chair beside the city gate.
Wrapped in Master Kael’s cloak.
Both hands on a chipped bowl.
Face buried in milk.
"Master Kael..."
Zera stood beside him, gripping the sides of her maid skirt.
Worry showed on her face.
She looked at Puff, then at Kael, then lowered her voice.
"But... she is really a dragon?"
Puff did not look up.
She hugged the bowl close and kept drinking.
Milk smeared the tip of her nose.
It covered her cheeks.
It gathered at the corners of her mouth.
A few strands of silver hair had fallen into the bowl and stuck there, wet and messy.
She looked nothing like a creature that could spread wings across the sky and stir storms with one flap.
She looked like a starving little thing someone had picked up from the roadside.
Too hungry to care about dignity.
