The poisonous gas that the dragon breathed was carried on the wind and surrounded the manor. Usato shouted at Nea to get to safety, then dove straight into the gas. But he had healing magic, so he was okay. He had to be. He was tough, so he would be fine. That’s what I told myself as I held back the urge to run over to him.
Then I noticed a black figure emerge from the roof of the manor, flying. It was coughing as it went.
Nea.
She was crying and coughing from the small amount of poison she’d ingested. She put a hand to her chest. Her face was filled with confusion.
“What the heck,” she said. “You didn’t have to poison me too. But why did Usato . . .”
Nea was the least of my concerns at that point, so I turned my attention back to the purple gas. It was more poison than any ordinary person could handle, and I worried about Usato who was lost inside of it. Just then, I saw something fly out of the gas. It was one of the dragon’s hands, and when I saw what was stuck in its grasp my blood ran cold.
“Usato?!” I cried.
He was trapped in the dragon’s claws, unable to move. Suddenly, my concern turned to full-blown fear. The dragon threw Usato with unbelievable force through the roof of the manor. He broke straight through it, then smashed through the third floor and the second floor before colliding with the first floor and sending a shockwave through the ground.
“Oh no . . . Usato . . .” I uttered.
No human could withstand such an impact. It would have destroyed them.
Is Usato . . . dead?
I fell to my knees. I didn’t want to believe my eyes.
“No, it can’t be,” I said. “I didn’t see this. Usato couldn’t have . . . he couldn’t have died here . . .”
I still hadn’t foreseen his death. We still hadn’t arrived at the future I saw in my vision. I kept telling myself that as I stumbled toward the manor where he had fallen. But I didn’t get very far. Blurin stopped me.
“Blurin?” I asked.
“Gwah.”
There was no anger or sadness in the grizzly’s eyes. What I saw was something like trust.
“We don’t have to worry about him?” I asked.
Blurin nodded confidently and looked over at the manor. It was like the grizzly was convinced that there was no way such a fall would have finished Usato off.
“He’s going to be okay?”
I had heard about how Usato and Blurin met. It was in a forest called the Darkness of Llinger. They had joined forces to fight the snake that killed Blurin’s parents. In the end, it had been Usato’s teacher Rose who landed the killing blow, but even then, they had met under fearsome conditions. With death’s door threatening to open before them, Usato and Blurin had formed a bond. Blurin understood Usato in a way others perhaps couldn’t.
Blurin knew that Usato was not someone who would ever go down easy. And when I saw that resolute confidence in the grizzly’s eyes, I wiped the tears from my own and nodded.
“You’re right,” I said. “I can’t lose faith now. Usato will be okay. That’s not nearly enough to take him out of the fight.”
I’d only known Usato for a short time, but I knew his strength. I’d seen it myself countless times. He did things that were inhuman. His personality could flip like a coin, and he was a bully and insane. But he had never once betrayed my trust. I didn’t think he would betray me now. So I had to believe in him. I had to believe he would make it through this.
“Thanks, Blurin,” I said. “I feel better now.”
If I’d run over to the manor, I only would have poisoned myself. If Usato had been okay, then I would have made things harder for him. Right now, it was better for me to stay here with Blurin, protect Aruku, and use my powers to predict the dragon’s movements. I took a few steps back and looked at the dragon. Nea was still shocked and confused, staring at the manor that Usato had partially destroyed.
With a swipe of its tail, the dragon dispersed the poison in the air. It looked into the manor, and it let out a delighted roar. It lifted its arms up high.
“You have to be kidding!” I said.
Even after slamming Usato right through the manor, it was going to attack him again? Could Usato even survive such a blow? I was ready to shout at the dragon, hoping to make it stop, but before I could Nea froze it in its tracks.
“Stop!” she said. “You’re not to attack him any further without my permission!”
The dragon growled.
“Look at the mess you’ve made! This is a disaster. I’ll be sleeping at the village tonight, that’s for sure. But let’s patch Usato up first, okay? He did save me, after all.”
Nea’s hand was alighted with magical energy, and she pointed it at the dragon. Concentration etched itself onto her face as she focused. She looked at the dragon and tilted her head, confused. The magical energy around her hand wavered suspiciously.
“Usato was right. You’re no ordinary zombie,” she said. “But as long as you’re under my control, you’re still just a puppet. Without magic energy, you’re nothing more than a corpse.”
The dragon’s body shuddered, and a purple magical energy seeped from its body and back to Nea, her hand illuminated by the very same color. It looked very much as though the chains that connected her to the dragon’s body were disappearing. That was how necromancers controlled the dead—by filling them with magical energy and using that energy to control them. By that logic it looked like Nea was taking her magical energy back.
It took about ten seconds for Nea to siphon all the magical energy. The dragon then stopped entirely. Nea looked at it, satisfied that it was once again just a corpse, and then she let out a sigh.
“Phew. And now you’re just another corpse,” she said. “What was that Usato was talking about, huh? He had me all paranoid for a moment there. Well, time to go get my new prisoner!”
She turned away from the dragon, and as she did, I glanced at Blurin. With the dragon out of the picture, all that remained was Nea and her zombies. Blurin and I could handle that much on our own. From what I’d just seen, it would require a significant amount of magical energy to bring the dragon back again. We could beat Nea up before she ever had the chance to do it.
I didn’t really like the way my thoughts clearly stunk of Usato’s influence, but it really was our best option. That made our first order of business clear: slap Nea upside the head. We walked quietly toward the manor so as not to be spotted. But that was when I noticed the dragon’s eye.
It was pitch black in the moonlight, but it moved, and an instant later its clawed hand had Nea in its grasp.
“Wh-what the heck?!” she cried.
“I am free,” said the dragon. “The interference of your magic is gone. The hero is dead.”
It can talk?!
Why was it moving? Nea had taken back her magical energy. There was no spell anymore.
“You have my thanks, necromancer,” said the dragon. “You gave me life. If you hadn’t, I would have rotted away over the next three hundred years.”
“Gave you life?! But you’re a corpse! You’re a dead body! You don’t have a soul! How could you possibly have a soul!”
“I don’t know. It matters not. None of it changes the fact that I am here, now.”
With Nea still in its hand, the dragon stood up on its hind legs and scanned the surrounding area. Nea followed its gaze, and when she realized where it settled, she went pale. It was looking toward Ieva Village, the place she sometimes called home.
“Now that I am back, I have but one goal: destruction. Everything that enters my field of view will be massacred.”
“No! You can’t!” cried Nea.
The dragon grinned at her pained cry.
“Why?” asked the dragon, tilting its head.
“Because it’s mine,” she said. “Don’t do anything to the village, please. I don’t care about anything else, just leave the village.”
“For you, humans are mere sustenance, no? I remember that village. I remember your father. That village is nothing but a farm. The people there are livestock, waiting to become meals. Their lives mean nothing.”
Nea’s face scrunched up uncomfortably at the dragon’s choice of words.
“Exactly,” she said. “That place is . . . it’s my farm. So I don’t want you laying a finger on it.”
The dragon turned up its nose and chuckled. It squeezed Nea tighter in its grasp and she groaned.
“I care not,” said the dragon. “I will kill them all. Your village. This country. The entire continent. All of it.”
“Stop,” Nea said. “You can’t. I brought you back, didn’t I?”
The dragon chuckled again.
“That means nothing, little bat.”
The dragon then threw Nea through the hole in the manor’s roof. She slammed into the ground on the third floor, then bounced out of sight. I didn’t know why she was trying to save the village, but I didn’t care. She was the only one who could have stopped the dragon, and now she was broken. The situation was hopeless.
“What do we do now?” I uttered.
I tried looking into the futures in which we stood and fought the dragon, but in every single one we ended up dead. When the dragon looked at me with his dark black eye, I was frozen. I thought I would be killed.
Then something flew out from the first floor of the manor carrying swinging a spear with an axe blade on it right for the dragon’s mouth. The dragon let out a roar and tumbled to its side at the impact.
“Consider that payback!”
I saw the white coat caught on the wind, the spear with the axe blade on it, and Usato. He was clutching the weapon as he landed on the ground.
“Are you okay?!” he asked.
I was glad that he’d come, but instead of words of joy I let out a scream of fright.
“You’re terrifying!” I blurted out.
Usato’s face was covered in blood. The fierce stare in his eyes was beyond frightening.