Zack’s heart went out to the dragon, but he shut those emotions out. Alec, too, fought through his own pity to rouse his fellow adventurers.
The dragon was truly a sorrowful, pitiful thing, but if left to its own devices, it would cause irreparable harm. They simply could not allow that to happen. The adventurers and the knights knew now what the dragon longed for, looking past the darkness of its own heart. It wanted freedom. It was a deformed creature—a patchwork monster that longed to be free of the body that tied it down.
And so the humans would take it upon themselves to free it from the nightmares of the fallen Empire. They would grant the dragon eternal freedom.
But the instinctual will to live was no simple thing to resist, and so the monster continued its struggle. Filled with the terror of being dragged back down into that abyss of solitude and despair, the dragon took to melting the surrounding ice with searing flame, but found new ice sprouting up each time. Terrified to discover that it might not escape death’s clutches, the dragon fell into panic. It screamed as it unleashed a rain of fire over the surrounding humans.
Those who could not escape the flames fell, one after the other. Some dropped to the ground, motionless, while others screamed, writhing on the floor as agony racked their bodies. Medics and physickers dashed around seeing to the wounded, and those who made it back to their feet then prepared themselves for another round against their foe.
From the forest that spread out from the lake, a man watched all of this as it happened. He had extricated himself, crawling as necessary, from a small cave hidden by the roots of one of the giant trees. Through those labyrinthine tunnels, in the depths of that cave, was a hidden facility in which the man had awakened the dragon. When he emerged, however, it was to the sight of his partners being mercilessly and brutally eaten.
And from there, he had observed as the Storydians fought desperately to face down the rampaging beast. He had expected as much, but the state of the battlefield filled him with despair.
“So it could not be controlled after all...”
The might of the Empire itself had failed to rein in the beast—what hope did a few fleeing Imperial nobles have? And yet they had persisted, clinging to the dragon in a desperate attempt to see their lands recaptured.
The man watched on, disgusted by what he saw, and it was then that his gaze fell upon one adventurer in particular—a magical swordsman battling with the suppression forces.
“He looks familiar...”
The man felt he’d seen the swordsman once before, at a hunting meet sponsored by the royal family. He looked awfully like the husband of a woman who was the daughter of an arms merchant. He hadn’t seen the swordsman up close, and so it was simply that, from behind, there was something similar in the way he held himself to the husband the man had seen but only once. If the man had been coming from a place of common sense, he would have realized that the chances of them being one and the same person were extremely low.
But the man had lost the majority of his sanity to the cold, to starvation, and to the endless march he’d trudged to reach the lake—and thus, he could not take his eyes from the swordsman.
“The elector’s half brother, who sold his own employer to the allied nations, and betrayed us all, indirectly causing the Empire’s destruction...” he uttered.
This swordsman now stood directly across from the man, holding himself as though he had always been Storydian, now intent on seeing the dragon—the Imperials’ last chance to regain their home!—dead. The man was only barely aware of the fact that he was nocking an arrow to his bow—an arrow laced with the venom of the swamp snake, which had been meant for the dragon in the event they lost control of it. In truth, however, the man had never believed for a moment that these arrows would have their desired effect on such a creature.
But a man? A man hit by such an arrow would face unbearable, excruciating pain, and be dead in less than a half an hour.
And so it was that the man’s target was decided—the swordsman, the betrayer. The Imperial pulled on the bowstring—a weapon that had been approved by the now-deceased Imperial princess herself—and set his mind on seeing the swordsman dead. He needed to see blood, to taste vengeance, were he to ever satiate the cries of his fallen comrades.
Lost in his delusional obsessions, the Imperial drew the bowstring back and aimed.
What is that?
Clemens was catching his breath and wiping the blood from his dual blades when he noticed a shadow among the trees. The figure was behind the dragon, on its left, and looked like a man watching from the shade of a giant tree. He was dressed like a hunter, one whose attire had seen better days.
It was mostly coincidence that Clemens had happened to look that way. There was no way he would have noticed the man in the midst of battle otherwise. Clemens wondered if he was someone who hadn’t fled in time, or perhaps a hunter who had ignored the order to stay clear.
What bothered Clemens was that the man was pulling back on a bowstring, but the direction he was aiming in didn’t make sense. His bow wasn’t pointed in the same direction as the other archers’. As Clemens narrowed his eyes to ascertain where the man’s arrow was headed, Frol noticed too.
“He’s an Imperial,” he said, his voice tense. “I saw him at the refugee camp a number of times. He didn’t like it much, however, and didn’t stay long.”
Goose bumps covered Clemens’s body as he realized what the man was pointing at—the bow was aimed at Alec.
“Alec!” he shouted. “An archer is aiming at you!”
He bellowed the words with everything he had, but his voice was drowned out by the fiery explosions. Nobody else could sense the murderous hatred wafting from the man because of the confusion of the battlefield.
“Damn it all!” Clemens spat.
Clemens did not know if he could cover the distance in time. The man already had his bowstring pulled to its limit. But all the same, Clemens could not bear to do nothing.
Please let me make it in time...!
He took off running, his hat lost to the whims of the wind, his silver hair trailing out behind him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man loose the arrow.
“Alec! Watch out!”
But his shout was drowned out by the dragon’s roar.
Am I too late?!
He knew that he could not stop such a high-speed arrow with the blades in his hands, but all the same, Clemens leapt towards Alec’s back. In an instant, there was the sound of his blades as they scratched against something. Immediately after came the shock of an explosion.
As Alec spun, he was met by the sight of fresh blood and silver strands.