The desert was as vast as the forest and opened out without a single obstacle. The two big cats ran without hesitation.
After about an hour of nonstop running, our destination gradually came into view.
Enormous cliffs speared up toward the sky. It looked as if the earth had been ripped open and the rock had reared its head.
I swallowed dry.
“Grrr...”
When the mouth of the gorge appeared, Tymer gradually bled off speed. After stopping safely, she lowered her head so the humans could dismount.
Margon jumped down first and took the unconscious Varen into his arms.
“Kh—he’s heavier than he looks.”
“If he’s heavy for you, imagine what he is for me.”
Even for strong-armed Margon, the weight was a struggle—more so because he only had one arm.
I hopped lightly off Tymer. Then I saw Varen slumped awkwardly against Margon’s chest.
“Pff— ahem. You two look cozy.”
I barely kept from bursting out laughing and steered the talk away.
Margon’s face crumpled at once, and even unconscious Varen looked displeased.
I finally lifted my gaze to the Belzena Mountain Range we had reached. Getting here had been hard enough, but it felt like the real ordeal was only beginning.
The gap between the high-risen cliffs was about three meters. At the gorge’s entrance, things that looked like a trader’s goods lay abandoned.
Seeing them brought the original story back to me.
Greedy merchants had tried to trade with dragons. They supposedly never even glimpsed a customer’s nose.
“Looks like they got stopped at the entrance.”
“Sorry? The entrance is big?”
The one who answered my mutter was Kallen.
I went and fetched a cart from the abandoned goods. The wheel rattled, but it would carry Varen.
Then I looked at Tymer and her cub. Creatures from the tropics were wheezing in the desert’s hot, dry air.
“You’ve done more than enough for us, Tymer. Your medical bill is well paid—go on back to where you live.”
“Grrr...”
Tymer dipped her head slightly and turned away.
Watching a monster’s back as I sent her off left me uneasy.
If I hadn’t lost the Spirit’s backpack, I would have handed over the stash of jerky I’d tucked away as emergency rations.
All I had was Kallen’s herb pack. Plenty of herbs for humans, nothing Tymer needed.
“Ah? Wait, pretty girl. Hold on.”
Come to think of it, there was something big cats like.
I took Kallen’s pack and dug inside. I remembered spotting a familiar plant while searching the tower for anything useful.
It looked like ordinary mint leaves, but this was definitely—
“Grrrng, kharrng...”
“Arrng, arrng...”
At the sudden catnip, Tymer and her cub’s pupils blew wide.
It was barely a fistful, and yet they shoved in, snuffling, rubbing their faces in bliss.
With a mother the size of a house and a cub the size of a truck both crowding me, there was no holding my ground.
“Ahahaha, you adorable things! Oh wow, you like it that much?”
So what if it was a handful. King-sized meant king-cute.
Watching me with envy, Kallen shook out the remaining catnip and made two small pouches.
When we hooked one pouch over each of their fangs, the giant cats’ tails seemed to go pop.
It was a parting gift no jerky could touch.
***
We loaded Varen onto the cart and set out.
The flat stretch was manageable. Soon it turned into an unbroken climb.
“Ha... ha, I can’t... go...”
Kallen’s words came out in broken bits. When I looked back, her thin legs were trembling.
Unlike me, who had recovered by taking in all of Varen’s life force, the other two had had no rest at all.
I was the only one brimming with energy, even though I alone was hauling the cart.
Margon was in especially bad shape. His skin, normally sun-browned, had gone pale.
Sweat poured off him as he said, “Sss—huff... Ceryl, could we rest a moment...”
“I’ll go ahead. You two follow slowly.”
“I— I can’t... huff...”
“Or do you want to stay here?”
I meant to look out for exhausted comrades in my own way.
But both of them jerked upright and followed. They’d taken it as a threat to leave them behind.
I didn’t bother to clear up the misunderstanding. I hauled the cart in silence up the grade.
In my normal condition, this would have been unthinkable. The dragon’s strength was vivid in my body.
Even so, I kept sighing.
“Damn it, where is it.”
How were we supposed to find Varen’s home in all this.
I was taking point, but honestly I was at a loss.
We’d suffered to reach the Eterna Nest to obtain exact coordinates of the dragon habitat.
At a human walking pace, searching the entire Belzena Range might take being born a hundred times over.
Maybe Varen had come to. On that threadbare hope, I looked back.
“Ugh... kh...”
Varen was still fighting for breath.
We were in a place hotter than the forest, and his lips kept going bluer, broadcasting his temperature.
I ground my teeth and faced forward again.
I had gone through hell to save him. I had gotten him this far.
I was not going to let him die because he had given me too much of his life force.
So the ordeal went on. Hours under the blazing sun, sweat poured off me like rain.
“Ha... urgh, urk...”
At last Kallen hit her limit and even dry-heaved.
I stopped the «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» cart in a hurry and went to them.
Kallen’s eyes wouldn’t open properly, as if she were half-fainted, and Margon looked half-dead, collapsed on the ground.
“My... my throat is so dry...”
Kallen murmured with cracked lips.
I looked around with a desperate heart. The terrain was a gorge, but the riverbed had long since dried; only the trace of where water once ran remained.
I had never longed for the Spirit’s waterskin more.
Then Kallen, staring blankly into the distance, lifted a trembling finger. Her long forefinger pointed to the end of the uphill.
“Th—there, someone...”
Someone? The pronoun made my ears prick. I whipped my head to follow her point.
Someone stood high up with the sun at his back, looking down at us. The distance and backlight hid his face.
But the aura he gave off, the alien presence, felt familiar.
“Ha... found you.”
Relief escaped me at the sight of the stranger.
He looked like someone kindly coming out to greet lost foreigners who couldn’t find the way.
I stood slowly and started up toward the figure at the top of the slope.
I only took a few steps before my body locked up. The pressure was overwhelming—but I’d felt it before, so it didn’t rattle me.
“Stop there. No further human entry will be permitted.”
Ah. Not a guide—a gatekeeper.
He was a dragon in Humanization.
Given the distance, his low, calm voice shouldn’t have carried. Yet it landed in me as if it rang in my skull.
Sweat dampened my palms. I forced my rigid body to move and clenched a fist.
As Varen proved, dragons are proud beings. And very merciful ones.
When I was a middle-schooler reading the original, I was a fervent fan of the dragon race. I remembered the sentence about them exactly.
A dragon does not kill the one who bows first.
I bent my stiff neck and went to one knee. I caught my breath there for a moment.
I had come a long way to say this.
“I have brought Varen Dravergh.”
Kallen and Margon, taking their cue from me, awkwardly copied the posture.
Three humans knelt with heads bowed, but no answer came from the dragon.
True to a gatekeeper, he seemed a cautious sort.
“Humans claim to have brought Varen Dravergh?”
“Yes. You may confirm it.”
I gestured respectfully toward the cart.
But the gatekeeper didn’t approach rashly. Instead, heat swept over us.
It was surely hot air, and yet it felt like my bones were freezing.
“Ha. So Dravergh returns.”
The gatekeeper, using a dragon’s power rather than his body, tipped his head to the sky.
“SKRAAAAA!!!”
In human shape, he gave a dragon’s cry.
Kallen and Margon flinched hard, but I smiled.
Because the true message of a dragon, inaudible to the others, rang in my head.
“Varen has returned!!!”
The thunderous roar struck the steep cliffs and spun out endless echoes.
From far off, a violent storm was coming.
When I lifted my bowed head, a flight of dragons came knifing through the gorge between walls of wind.
“...Holy— that’s insane.”
I’d tried to hold it in, but the wonder forced the words out.
Two golden dragons, Varen’s likeness, led the way, and dragons of every color followed.
Blue, red, and black scales symbolizing their houses flashed in iridescent light.
My mouth fell open before I knew it at the spectacle unfolding at arm’s length.
“C— Ceryl... d-dra— hic...”
Pressed close behind me, Kallen started hiccuping.
She had endured and adapted more than a month with Varen, but dragons were still an object of fear to her.
For me it was a miracle. For Kallen, with them coming in a mass, fear made sense.
I reached a hand back and patted her knee.
“Don’t be scared. Dragons aren’t all dangerous. You know that now.”
At my words Kallen glanced at Varen and gave a small nod.
The first to arrive were the two golden dragons who had flown in front.
As they drew near, the pair shed a faint light. When the gentle flash faded, two humans hung in the air.
They had no wings. Their legs didn’t flail.
They simply drifted down in perfect human form, light and elegant, to land.
“Varen has returned?”
The man a step ahead asked, voice trembling.
And I had to fight a smile when I saw their faces.
The man’s eyes were blue, and the woman’s hair was gold to her waist.
I could guess who they were without saying it aloud.
