The sun was unusually blazing, and sweat ran in sheets even at rest.
I dug through the pack and fished a worn shovel out of the Spirit’s storeroom. As luck had it, there was only one.
With it, I started to break the sunny ground near the cave. It was under an old, massive tree where the light came through well.
I hadn’t shoveled this hard since discharge. The muscle memory of digging came easy even in Ceryl’s body.
“Ceryl, stop and rest. I’ll do the rest.”
“No. I have to do it. I’m fine.”
Varen, worried for my ankle, tried to stop me more than once. Kallen rolled up her sleeves, saying she’d help.
Even so, I took the shovel alone. This was the last courtesy to Leobin, who had followed me without even being able to die.
I dug a very deep pit. I laid Leobin in it, straight. His body was already entering rigor, and pulling the arrow from his neck took work.
On the clean body I set the crutches I’d made. The man gave me his life, and all I’d given him was a pair of crude sticks.
Then I began to cover him again with earth. With each careful shovel of soil, Leobin disappeared.
Backbreaking work begun at noon finished around sunset. My body was wrung out, but my mind was clear.
It was the first grave I’d ever made, but it looked passable. As I dropped to sit in front and catch my breath, Kallen gently set down a bouquet.
Its white, full petals glowed faintly.
“It’s a Pathfinder flower. Herb gatherers look for it to find their way in the mountains.”
“Hah, that’s good.”
I let a small laugh out. Kallen gave a sad smile and sat beside me, and Varen stood silent behind.
I looked at the rounded grave. More precisely, at Leobin, who would be resting easy deep below.
“Brat. I buried you deep—now you can’t chase me.”
I’d started at a reasonable depth, then took it down as far as my height. However strong the magic was, this should keep him from following.
A pledge I’d tossed off with a bright grin flashed up.
“What do you mean, follow me to hell. That’s not a place for a guy like you.”
There was no answer to the mutter aimed at Leobin.
After a day with the shovel my hands tingled. Noble or not, even a fallen one, these fine hands, with no callus to them, didn’t suit labor.
I looked down at my reddened palms, then pointlessly clenched and unclenched them.
“Thanks to you, my palms are all skinned. Honestly, I didn’t like you from the start.”
When I first came to this world, I met Leobin.
We argued over killing or not killing the burning Yangsooni.
“You idiot. Why would you douse Karbe with water. If her insides are on fire and you feed hay, of course it goes to hell.”
God, it’s absurd even in hindsight. There are limits to stupidity. Isn’t it common sense not to throw hay on a fireball.
“And with that big frame, the way you stuffed yourself. Heading out to fish and you brought a whole basket of lunch along.”
When I went to catch red salmon for Varen, I was fretting over starving the dragon, and next to me he was blandly chewing a sandwich—and it boiled my blood.
“Well, you did use your fists. Said you were a swordsman and dropped a few sturdy men barehanded.”
I’d thought he was just a dummy, but when Jed abducted me, how glad I was to see that blond hair through the blood running.
“Ha, and he could ride. The way you handled a horse wasn’t ordinary. Maybe that ‘martial school’ line wasn’t a lie.”
He made that rickety wagon fly. The ride felt like a roller coaster, though.
“But if you didn’t know how to handle monsters, why follow me to the Facility? You’d have raked it in as a mercenary.”
Since Ceryl Aylos never came out, of course Leobin never appeared in the original.
“With that patter, you’d have done well in trade. You’d have fished and sold your catch.”
I pictured a future for Leobin I’d never seen—no one had ever written it.
“Stupid but kind, so you’d match with a smart, kind woman. Kids: a blond son, and a daughter who took after her mother. Two would be just right.”
I brushed the bouquet Kallen had brought. Wherever my hand passed, the faint light deepened and sank.
“Don’t wander this forest anymore chasing after me. Look for the guide-bloom and find your way.”
If I’d had liquor, I would have poured him a cup, but the river’s Spirit hadn’t laid out any.
In its stead I sprinkled cold, clean water from the stream. Then I set my hand on the mound and closed my eyes.
The red sunset bathed the sunny spot. Far off, an unknown mountain bird cried, and above my head the old tree’s leaves whispered.
And I heard a voice. It couldn’t be—but it was unmistakably Leobin.
Healthy, stout, and full of peace.
‘Ceryl, thank you for saving me.’
I smiled with my eyes shut.
You fool. What is there to thank me for, even at the end.
And so I gave my final farewell to Ceryl Aylos’s—
No. To my knight.
***
We finished Leobin’s funeral, and night came.
With each passing day the sunset burned blood-red and the night grew longer. I had a bad feeling.
We’d lost more time than planned; now we really had to pick up speed. A forced march was slated starting tomorrow, but sleep didn’t come easy.
A bright moon washed the world. I stared blankly up at the night sky. Somewhere far off, a stout snore ran out of breath.
Then soft steps through grass drew closer. I didn’t need to look back to know who it was.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Right. I already slept enough for three days.”
For once, Varen was fine even after sundown. Just in case, I felt his forehead. Warm—not hot—just right.
Varen, who calmly leaned his brow to mine, raised a hand in return. He set his palm on my crown and let out a short breath.
“You’ve recovered already.”
With the bottomless jar corked, Ceryl’s body—rich in life force to begin with—came back fast.
I hid the bitter taste and gave a deliberate, teasing smile.
“You don’t have to charge me anymore, then.”
“That’s a shame.”
“.......”
“A great shame.”
Honestly. If nothing else, he’s frank with his feelings.
When I lifted the hand resting on my head, he let me. Instead, he studied my face carefully.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
While I was caught in those blue eyes, a familiar, damp sensation slid along my back. It wrapped my waist on its own and rose to my chest.
Seeing the dragon’s tail tuck me in by itself, I burst into a bright grin. I hauled it in and nuzzled my face, and Varen let out a deflated sound.
“Now you smile.”
“Ahaha, you really do know how to lift my mood.”
With his tail in my arms, Varen and I looked up at the sky together.
A black sheet was crammed with stars. The night Varen first came out of the Underground Prison, the sky had greeted him with this same downpour of light.
The image of a dragon, brand-new to the world, staring slack-jawed up at the night overlapped it. Somehow it felt like a lifetime.
“It feels like just the other day you were in the Underground Prison.”
“It wasn’t the other day. It’s day twenty-one, exactly.”
“...Already?”
Stock phrases don’t work on a fantasy-world dragon. Even so, the silly back-and-forth with Varen did enough to clear the air.
“Really? You’ve eaten crickets too?”
“Strictly speaking, my mouth was open and one went in.”
“Ugh... was it good?”
“To me it’s like a grain of sand. Not enough to taste.”
“Oh, our dragonboy has such a picky palate. Amazing you stuck it out underground.”
Varen looked at me with a warm smile. Smiling was getting natural on him.
“Now ‘dragonboy’ feels more familiar than my name.”
I scratched the back of my head, sheepish.
I’d coined the nickname to keep from using his true name. Lately, though, when things turned urgent, Varen’s name kept rising to the back of my throat.
“I’m supposed to be careful about saying your name, but it isn’t easy.”
“Why be careful? I like it when you call me Varen.”
At the two syllables popping out, I glanced around. No presence nearby, of course—but my chest still jumped.
“Can you toss it around like that? They said if someone knows your name, they can do some contract or whatever.”
“You mean the Heart-Contract.”
When I widened my eyes, Varen gave a short, dry laugh.
“Knowing the name doesn’t let you forge a Heart-Contract. If I don’t ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) permit it, there is no contract.”
“What? Then why was Jed so obsessed with your name?”
“The situation was different. I was bound then, and I had no mana.”
True. Back then, whether they cut your tail or pulled your claws, you couldn’t resist.
If anyone tried that now, their head would burst before the blade ever went in.
Come to think of it, the Spirit had used the word permission too. You have to ask a dragon’s leave to do it. More gentlemanly than I expected.
“You have to split a dragon’s chest and seize the heart.”
“.......”
“Then you speak each other’s true names and swear.”
Gentlemanly, my ass.
“Seize the heart... you mean, with your hand like this?”
I cupped my hand in the air like gripping a baseball. Varen nodded.
“If you seize the heart like this... wouldn’t that kill you?”
“A dragon won’t die from that.”
What kind of organism is a dragon.
I shook my head and stroked that lush tail. I deliberately ignored the twitch in the true body each time my hand passed.
Varen’s Humanized form no longer felt strange. He’d once snapped at me, asking what I meant that it wasn’t so different from his dragon shape.
Watch him quietly, though—especially those blue eyes—and the dragon is all there.
