How I wished it could have been different…but I’d always had to meet her like this. “Let’s play this out to the end, Anis! And if we meet again…” Before she could finish her sentence, the darkness had consumed her. The next moment, the darkness itself took on a clear outline, morphing until it started resembling a snake. Or rather— “…A dragon…?” Beautiful horns, calm red eyes, a white mane swaying in the wind. Lilana’s very existence had been irrevocably transformed. Now she was a dark serpentine dragon that called to mind memories from my past life. Spreading its wings wide, the creature cried out in the clearest, most melodious of voices: “” That sound echoed through my mind, like a chord played on some wondrous musical instrument. I was transfixed as the dragon that Lilana had become sang to the heavens. After a moment, though, I recovered and adopted a defensive posture. The creature was indeed beautiful, but I could not allow it to exist. Not in this world. This was no time to be captivated by its beauty. But just before I could launch an attack, something yanked me off my feet. “Wh-what?!” The force was so strong that I went flying toward the creature, as if gravity had been turned topsy-turvy. Meanwhile, the dragon remained stationary, its voice ringing out. At the same time, the forest began to rustle and move, as if being pulled toward it. The birds were the first to appear, sucked upward in a large spiral—before sinking into its dark flesh. “What…?!” First the birds were taken in, then the other animals that called the forest home, then the region’s monsters—all of them floating through the air, being pulled to the dragon’s body, and then being absorbed straight in. The dragon—who used to be Lilana—kept on singing, spreading its wings wide invitingly. Its voice was so pleasant that I could feel myself losing all will to fight. Chills shot down my spine as I watched the creatures of the forest allow themselves to be consumed. “You’re really trying to consume the whole world…?!” “Anis!” “Euphie!” All at once, I felt a shock from behind. Euphie had activated her royal robe to catch me. “Where is everyone?!” I cried. “They didn’t get sucked in, did they?!” “Lainie and Algard have erected a barrier to protect everyone, but this song seems to be weakening the spell’s effectiveness. It’s only going to be a matter of time…,” Euphie said. I glanced down. Below, everyone was shielding themselves behind a wall of earth, ice, and every other element they could summon up. For the time being, the barrier was weathering the storm, but I could tell that it was being chipped away like a crumbling sand dune. “…Anis,” Euphie said again, embracing me from behind, her voice weak. Magic would be useless here, so it was little wonder that Euphie was so discouraged. It wasn’t hard to guess why she was so clearly lost for words. “Anis!” a voice called from below. “Can you hear me?!” “Allie!” “It’s not too late! You and Euphyllia can still get out of here!” he shouted from behind the barrier, Acryl helping him to keep from falling down. I’m sure Euphie had meant to say the same thing, but couldn’t bring herself to speak the words out loud. If we stayed here, we would all be consumed. If that was inevitable, then Euphie and I should at least try to survive. That was the logical conclusion to draw from all this. “…Anis,” Euphie called out, holding on tightly. …The situation was critical. Nothing good would come if I let myself remain paralyzed by fear. I knew what I had to do. “Allie! You know who I am, don’t you?!” I cried out with a laugh. I sure could laugh in the face of all this, because I knew this situation better than anyone! “I’m the Kingdom of Palettia’s very own Dragon Killer, the one who’s already saved the country once before!” My opponent was a dragon, so there was only one thing to do. Even if magic didn’t reach it, I had to keep on resisting until the very end. Lilana, I’m the one who denied your eternity, so I’ll be the one to bring you down. This is no time for grief or regrets! I’ll send you off with the best magic I can muster. You could have been my friend—so let this commemorate our meeting. “Hold on!” I called to everyone below. “I’ll protect you all! Trust me with your lives!” Allie closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and flashed me a cynical smile, while Acryl opened her mouth wide in a laugh. “For goodness’ sake! If anyone is reckless enough—stupid enough—to find a way, it’s you, Anis!” “I’ll do it, too!” I called. “Then go! I’ll take care of everyone down here!” “I’m trusting you both!” “Of course you are!” Acryl shouted back. “Now hurry up and finish this! And one more thing!” “What?” Acryl was on the verge of tears. “Do it for my people, for every life Lilana snatched away! Please, Anisphia!” I responded with a firm nod, fully aware of the weight of this charge. “Go, Lady Anis! We’ll hold our ground!” Lainie called out. “At least we’ll get to see you hunt a dragon up close!” Garkie joked. “Not even a situation like this fazes you, Princess Anisphia! May fortune favor you!” Navre added. The knights assisting in creating the barrier, and the adventurers supporting them, shouted their support, too, their voices giving me strength. “Will you join me, Euphie?” I asked. “I know this is crazy, but still.” “…Yes. I’ll go anywhere for you. Now and always,” she said, taking my hand with a bright smile. I smiled back at her as I extended the wings of my royal robe. With both royal robes spread wide, we floated upward and away from Lilana’s gravity. At last, we were free—the clouds parting as the moon’s light shone down softly from overhead. “How are you planning to stop her, Anis…?” “I have an idea… You trust me with your life, don’t you, Euphie?” “Of course.” “Thank you. Then here goes.” “Eh?” Before she knew what I was doing, I leaned in and kissed her. With her lips still pressed to mine, I drew her tongue in and gave it a light bite. Euphie winced, but placed her hands on my shoulders. With that deep kiss, I absorbed the magical energy from her blood. She closed her tear-filled eyes as I rapidly drained her power. “…Sorry,” I said at last as I pulled back. “That’s a little too much magic for me.” “…Why didn’t you just tell me what you wanted?” Euphie asked with a teary glare as she wiped her mouth. She seemed somewhat languid after I had taken so much of her strength, but I needed her to hold out a little longer. “I’ll need you to help keep me in the air, Euphie. Worst-case scenario, I could use every last ounce of my own magical energy.” “…What are you going to do?” “Summon a dragon.” “…What?” “Using our combined magic—I’ll bring back that one we fought. Just like what Lilana did before.” “Huh…?! Y-you can do that…?!” “Probably. At least I think I can.” In short, I was going to reproduce the technique that Lilana had employed to summon her Jörmungandr. “As a Traveler, I don’t have the power to resonate with spirits. But I can absorb spirits by using magicite and make them follow my will. So it stands to reason that I should be able to make spirits take on the dragon’s form.” Through my study of vampire magicite, I had discovered their underlying mechanism for using magic. The trick wasn’t resonance, but rather control. Magicite compelled spirits—fragments of the world—to take form, and so the strength of one’s willpower was paramount. In the dream that Lilana had made for me, I was able to wield magic. That sensation was probably a side effect of the vampirization process. All the pieces, all the different paths that I had traveled, were now coming together. “There’s no guarantee it’ll be enough to beat her,” I admitted. “But still, I have to try.” “You’ll give it your all, won’t you?” Euphie said with a smile and a strong hug. I might not succeed. Failure was a very real possibility. But if there was even the slightest chance that this might work, I owed it to everyone to try. Though I was embarking on a path that I would have been terrified to travel alone, someone I trusted was holding my hand the whole way. “I’ll help, Anis,” Euphie said as she pulled out the Arc-en-Ciel. “If I can channel energy your way from the spirit side, maybe it will increase your power even more.” If she, a spirit covenantor, could draw on the spirits for assistance, that could only increase our chances. The only thing left was to give it a shot… Pretty much the usual formula! “Here goes, Euphie!” “Yes, Anis!” I held the Celestial ready while she gripped the Arc-en-Ciel, the two of us laying our blades one on top of the other. Focusing my mind, I delved deep into the magicite that had been born beside my heart, envisioning in my mind’s eye the great figure of the being that had once challenged me. It was just as beautiful and formidable as in real life—and its power resided now inside my chest. Was that dragon in any way inferior to Lilana? No way! I took a deep breath, a fire lighting in my chest like a fever—so scorching hot that it felt like it might burn me away. The heat was enough to leave me dizzy, but somewhere beyond that red-hot sensation, I felt like I could hear the dragon laughing, urging me to give it more and more. “Ugh, ugh, uggghhh!” “Anis…?!” It was so hot, so painful, that I couldn’t breathe. The dragon’s raucous laughter filled my brain, so loud it would have been deafening had it been sounding in the real world, and all I could do was scream back in response. “Go…! Shut up and take my power, you stupid dragon…!” The next moment, the heat tearing through my chest changed. No longer did it burn and sear. Now, it was a warm but no less powerful heat, beating in time with my heart. All at once, I was left depleted of magical energy, my soul squeezed so tight that precious little was left. My vision turned bright red. If I had been standing on the ground, I would have crashed to my knees. “A-Anis…!” No doubt sensing how exhausted I had been rendered, Euphie reached out to grab me—and with that, her own magical energy began to pour into me. As she experienced the same pain that I had just endured, her face contorted in agony—but even so, she refused to let go. “Come on, you…!” “It’s… It’s too much…!” Our magical energies were mixing, combining, spiraling, and weaving together until the two lines had become one. All of a sudden, an image popped into my mind. “Euphie! Raise the Arc-en-Ciel!” “R-right!” I lifted the Celestial into the air, with Euphie following suit a moment later. Something about this scene struck me as familiar. It was just like our public demonstration, the one in which we had presented our royal robes and received the people’s blessing. The combined magical energy converged through the tips of the two weapons—and what emerged was a dazzling, colorless light extending up into the heavens. The light soon split into two separate spirals, each circling around to create countless rings. Those shapes filled the sky, coalescing into a giant sphere. Eventually, the light subsided, shrinking into a single form. “…The dragon…” Euphie’s murmured voice filled the silence. With the sun having set, we could only make out its outline. Strangely enough, the light didn’t hurt my eyes. Had it taken on the form of a dragon, or was that a real dragon clothed in light? Either way, my magic had been given shape. All that remained was to add the finishing touches. I looked to the black dragon Lilana. She was a mass of steeping darkness. Next, with a swing of the Celestial, I issued my instructions to her white, glowing counterpart. “Return it to the light.” The dragon moved in time with my words, rapidly closing in on Lilana, who continued to sing her song, oblivious to the oncoming threat. Before I knew it, the gravitational pull dragging everything toward her had abated. Her power had been neutralized. The light shrouding the dragon that I had summoned was potent enough to reduce practically anything to light. If magic was like colored water, this phenomenon was akin to diluting it to render it transparent. Neutralizing, disabling, nullifying—those were the powers of my dragon. “” Lilana continued her song, but it had no effect. The dragon that I had summoned was too much for her. I’m sorry, I felt like murmuring, but I bit my lip before the words could come out. I hadn’t been able to accept it, but that dragon that she had become was Lilana’s wish made manifest, the ideals that she had dreamed of to the point of sacrificing her own body. It was a beautiful wish, and I was tearing it down. What was this if not my own ego at work? I was in no position to offer any apology. No, I had a responsibility to bear the burden of having denied her. “I won’t forget you. Everything you’ve inherited ends here. There’s no future for you. I won’t let you pass this fate onto anyone else… So sleep. Dream your eternal dream.” I fought to keep my voice from shaking, to keep myself from breaking down into tears. Euphie, in perfect understanding, took my hand. Encouraged by her warmth, I flashed the dragon a gentle smile. “Goodbye, Lilana—my friend who could have been.” At this farewell, my dragon turned back to me as if catching its breath. A moment later, it let out a wave of destruction. The magic that Lilana had given her life to weave was swept away, her dragon singing its song until the very end. Finally, she faded into nothing, as if little more than an illusion…and the sky turned white as the sun began to rise. With that, my dragon dissolved into nothingness, leaving a rainbow extending across the dawn sky. It was an astonishing sight, so mesmerizing that one might forget to blink. “…You can cry if you need to, Anis,” Euphie whispered as she approached. She was so gentle with me, and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. My heart poured itself out. I had to clench my teeth to endure the pain of it all. Slow, measured breaths. I don’t know how long it took me to calm down. “…I won’t cry. I owe it to her to see her off with a smile.” The heat spilling from the corners of my eyes was just my imagination. People always said rainbows were bridges between heaven and earth, so I hoped this one would lead Lilana to find peace. Yes, all I could do was hope.
Chapter 101
13 min read