The sound of wind rushed in her ears. There was a faint scent of the sea breeze. Something grazed her cheek with the softness of a plush toy. It was a long mane that smelled sweet like a flower.
“Shio! Wake up, Shio!”
“Yui…ri?”
The fierce shake of her shoulder woke Shio Hikawa. The first thing she saw was the familiar face of her best friend. Yuiri Haba’s eyes wavered with concern, and Shio saw huge wings slicing through the wind behind her friend. They were dragon wings that gleamed like steel.
“Glenda…huh? Oh yeah…Glenda jumped out in front of us and…”
Shio vigorously shook her head as bits of memories started coming back to her.
Glenda had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, generating encroachment of Nod to form a gate she’d dragged them through. Apparently, Shio and company were on Glenda’s back that very moment, flying God knows where.
Judging from the state of her body, Shio figured she hadn’t been unconscious for very long. They shouldn’t have been that far from Itogami Island yet—when she had that thought, Shio began to look around, then Yuiri pointed overhead with a grave expression.
“Shio, look!”
“Eh?”
Bewildered, Shio looked up, and her eyes were greeted by the twinkling surface of the sea. Shio gaped at the bizarre sight. An aquamarine sea covered the space over her head. A cloud-covered sky stretched below her. Losing her sense of up and down, Shio desperately clung to the dragon’s mane. She felt like she was having a nightmare.
“What is…this place…?”
Shio looked around in a daze at a world where earth and sky had traded places. With no landmarks to go by, she couldn’t make a proper estimate of distance, but the sea above their heads was at an altitude of two or three thousand meters at minimum.
At the center of the vast sea were the silhouettes of countless islands swirling in a spiral pattern. She had a sense of déjà vu as she gazed at the ruin of a steel-colored city—an artificial isle.
“That island…that’s not Itogami Island, right? Seems to be an…artificial isle, though…”
Yuiri spoke with a perplexed expression. Shio shook her head in silence, unable to answer her.
“They resemble the structures of New Itogami Island, yes.”
An unhappy-looking Kiriha appeared from behind Shio and Yuiri atop Glenda’s swaying mane. Apparently, she’d carefully climbed up Glenda’s long tail.
“Kiriha Kisaki, so you were safe and sound, too…”
“Yes. You must find that quite unfortunate.”
Kiriha gave the surprised Shio a sardonic reply. Yuiri looked between the artificial isle above them and Kiriha’s face.
“It really does seem like New Itogami Island… Then this might be…”
“Nod—is that not the most likely, especially when you add her controlling the encroachment of Nod?”
Kiriha shrugged her shoulders as she spoke. Shio felt dizzy yet again. Sure, they’d been observing the gate from the surface, but visiting Nod herself without any kind of preparation—emotional or otherwise—was well outside her expectations.
“What in the world’s going on, Glenda? Where are you taking us?”
Yuiri posed this question to Glenda in the tone of a scolding mother speaking to a young daughter, yet the steely dragon merely twitched her ears without looking back. She was looking not at the artificial isle above them, but at the sea of clouds spread before their eyes.
In a gap between the white, cotton candy–like clouds stood a single strip of land, resembling a cape with cliffs on both sides. Glenda was heading straight toward this cape in the sky.
“It would seem that structure is our destination.”
Kiriha calmly pointed this out, glaring at the artificial structure on the tip of the cape. It was a tall structure resembling a bell tower.
“Is that a…church?”
“It looks like a dam control facility to me…”
Yuiri and Shio tilted their heads, murmuring respectively. The cape floating among the clouds had a pointed tower standing upon it, a beautiful yet bizarre sight.
“Daah!!”
Glenda roared loudly as if to announce her return.
Making one, big circle in the air above the tower, she began to plunge toward the cape. They were actually heading toward the sky, so perhaps it was more accurate to call it a precipitous rise. Shio’s confused thoughts were mulling over this issue when Glenda’s entire body was suddenly wrapped in a steely twinkle.
The dragon’s huge body rapidly contracted, and her voluminous mane turned into long hair.
Glenda released her dragon form and returned to the body of a young girl. This, naturally, meant the girls riding on her back were hurled into the air.
“G-Glenda?! Waiiiit!”
“If you throw us off from here…die…we’re gonna die…!”
“Tch…!”
As Yuiri and Shio shrieked fervently, Kiriha silently girded her body to break the fall, but however long she waited, the anticipated impact of their landing failed to arrive.
After all, they weren’t falling. They were certainly moving downward, but the force of it was far softer than they had imagined.
Freed from the force of gravity, their bodies were light, almost like they were standing on the clouds—since, as a matter of fact, they were above the clouds, the feeling might well have been a natural one to have.
Like astronauts on a spacewalk, Shio and company awkwardly flailed their limbs as they landed on the cape amid the clouds. The light sensation conveyed through the soles of their feet felt like they’d landed on a papier-mâché bridge.
“It doesn’t…hurt?”
“It’s like walking on the moon.”
The lightness of their bodies felt strange enough for Yuiri and Kiriha to let out perplexed comments.
“Are the laws of physics different from our world…?”
Shio touched the moss-covered soil as she speculated. It wasn’t like anything she’d expected, but this was part of Nod. The inversion of sky and ground and the strength of gravity were probably things they just needed to accept as is.