A Dragon Leaps Through the Night-Lit City

Zaido — middle-aged, monocled — had finally settled the deferred payment for the swift horses he'd procured on Sherwood Firm's solid credit, and was back at the branch.

Night by now.

The day's running across the duchy had left his body heavy. The moment he let out the breath of that's it for today, the fatigue caught him up all at once. Even getting as far as his desk felt like a stretch; he dropped onto the long counter at the firm's entrance and let out his second sigh.

That was when, into Zaido's ear, a strange sound found its way.

At first, a small, faint scrape — as if something were rubbing along a wall in the basement.

It got louder. Steadily.

What turned suspicion into certainty was a gan, then a gashan — the sounds of something breaking down there.

"…"

He braced. Thieves, perhaps?

No — out of the question. As the man running the firm, locking up was, by reflex, the first item on his list. There was no way he had managed to fumble that this late in his career.

In which case — his thoughts went somewhere else.

And right there — the bad feeling found him.

Earlier in the day, there had been an event.

— It'll be fine, probably.

The man with the otherworldly looks and snow-white hair had said it.

Fine. — What was?

The land dragon. That.

Right after Shaw and the rest had left, he had gone down to check.

The dragon had been asleep. Not the precarious kind of asleep where you couldn't tell whether it was alive or dead. A clean, calm sleep — as if its full strength had come back.

If we sell it, the profit will be enormous — that had been Shaw's thinking, and Zaido had agreed without reservation.

Confident in if it's sleeping like that, it's fine, and out of time, he'd run off to settle the deferred payment for the horses.

— That was the failure.

He understood it now.

A recovered land dragon, in that cage. Plainly an idiotic configuration on his part.

The only reason the cage had been adequate at all was because the dragon had been dying. With no cure available, the cage had been enough. But that snow-white-haired monster had cured the dragon's 〈Fatal Draconic Disease〉.

"— Oh no."

He really was, after all, loose at the final detail.

If a dragon recovered its stamina, regained its full natural strength as a land dragon, then a cage like that—

A bak.

A burst of sound suddenly pierced Zaido's ear.

From behind him.

His back.

The basement's entrance was that direction.

He turned, slowly, fearfully.

"— Gyau."

A black-scaled dragon's head was sticking up out of the basement entrance.

Zaido thought his heart might stop on the spot.

---

— Hasn't it gotten bigger?

What had that Merea monster done to this thing?

That was the first thought. When they had brought it in, they had just barely managed to fit the whole cage through the entrance. Now this same dragon could only fit its head through. The bak he'd just heard had been the floor cracking around the dragon's body — naturally, the floor was what had given.

"W-w-w-wait. — Listen — calm down. Stay there. Don't move."

Children grow when they sleep, the saying went, but this was not what they meant.

There was a limit even on child grows when sleeping. This had blown straight past growing and gone somewhere else entirely.

Zaido waved both hands. Calm down.

He'd given up, on the spot, on any aspirational adult composure. He went straight to whatever physical comedy would land legibly. A man on the cusp of his sixties bouncing on the spot like an animated puppet might have read as undignified to anyone watching — but Zaido was past dignity. He was, frankly, terrified.

For a normal human to face down a wild land dragon was a thoroughly suicidal proposition. Even a child land dragon. One swing of the tail — instant death.

"Gyau."

"All right — all right, I get it. — That it? You're hungry?"

"Gyau?"

He noticed, then, the fragments of basement merchandise sticking out of the corners of the dragon's mouth.

"…Ah. So you've already eaten, then."

He very nearly held his head in his hands. In the red. Definitely in the red.

"Gyau!"

It was saying something. Pity that it had chosen now to start talking; Zaido needed the white monster back. Compared to the half-dead state earlier, the dragon was alarmingly lively. Maybe the disease had been suppressing its growth as well.

— Have mercy.

He prayed, briefly, to the god of gold he generally prayed to.

A second round of cracking. The branch's floor was groaning in earnest now.

"O-oi!"

"Gyaaau—"

The dragon was forcing the rest of itself up out of the basement.

— And exactly how am I supposed to stop that?

There was no method. None.

Then — half its body now out — the dragon caught the scent of something and turned its head sharply that way.

"Gya?"

Nostrils twitching. It was sniffing at something.

Zaido knew immediately what.

"That monster's…"

Merea's torn clothes.

After whatever the dragon-cure scuffle had done to him in the basement, Merea had been changed out of his ruined clothes — Shaw had exchanged them for something less conspicuous to wear out — and the original, torn set still sat on the long counter of the firm.

The dragon was scenting them.

Then —

"Gyau!"

— the head came up sharply, happy about something.

This! or Him! — it had said something to that effect, Zaido inferred by guess.

The moment he sensed it, the next prediction came.

"D-don't tell me — you—"

"Gyaaau!"

Bad premonitions become reality faster the worse they are. Zaido locked that one in as a personal article of faith on the spot.

A meki — a particularly loud cry from the floor — and the dragon hauled the rest of itself out into the room.

— It's — it's huge…

Truly. When. Not yet adult-dragon size, but the small-child shape was gone. The firm's front door was definitely not going to accommodate it.

And the worse premonition came right behind.

— It's going to follow him.

Beyond doubting, by now.

The dragon, the moment it had taken in the scent of those clothes, had visibly stood up — as if something had clicked.

Its nose was pointed east.

Exactly the direction Merea's group had taken.

Whatever sensory equipment a dragon used to read distance — Zaido had no idea — but the dragon races didn't move along the lines of human predictions in the first place.

"O-oi! Wait — listen — don't make a sound. Right? — Ah — break out without making any sound."

He no longer fully knew what he was saying.

He had grasped, by this point, that he could not stop the dragon. He was, in a sense, just relieved he wasn't being eaten. Fine if it left of its own accord — but if it drew attention on the way out, there was a non-zero chance Mūzeg's pursuers would catch wind. The very small chance of dragon implies Demon Lords nearby running through someone's head somewhere.

— Mind you, dragon-in-streets-equals-Demon-Lords isn't an obvious leap.

But it was something unusual. Investigation could lead to collision.

"Quiet. — Understand? Quiet."

"Gyau?"

— No good.

The dragon tilted its head as if to say what are you on about? For a beat Zaido found it endearing; then despair came in over the top.

He tried what he could.

He flung the front door wide. Out — quietly. He gestured.

It was night, at least. Deep night, and a back-alley setting at that. No one in immediate sight. He had, just this once, reasons to be grateful for Neuce Gauss's custom of holding its evening salons indoors.

Better than out in the open was, at this point, the lower bar.

If the dragon could just leave the duchy without rattling anything else —

That was the best case. — Probably.

"Gyau!"

The dragon, as though it had read Zaido's words, slowly slid its head into the doorway—

"Oh—"

— and then —

"Gya."

— as if to say too much hassle — it flatly demolished the entryway and went out into the night.

"…Ah."

For one brief moment, the cost of the repairs flashed across Zaido's brain.

"…Whatever happens, happens."

Nothing he could do at this stage.

Out in the open, the dragon swung its head around, planted all four legs, and curved its tail.

It had, narrowly, avoided damaging the buildings around the firm. Small mercy. The firm itself, well —

Zaido — having let go of the whole situation — watched the dragon's movements with resignation.

And then —

"Gyaaau—"

— he saw the dragon shift into a leap stance.

Limbs braced. Wings spread —

It flew.

No. It leapt.

Land dragons couldn't fly. But the speed at which the body shot up into the night sky had Zaido, helplessly, parsing it as flight regardless. A bullet of dragon-mass, hurled into the sky.

The earth where it had launched simply collapsed; the recoil knocked Zaido off his feet.

"Whoa—!"

The branch building creaked again. A formula-lamp two streets over popped on.

Voices were rising — what was that? — but no one out there was going to figure out what.

Zaido, having taken the corner of the long counter on his backside, rubbed the bruise — ow, ow — and still made his way out into the street to watch the dragon's back dwindling toward the horizon.

"It's a touch graceless on the leap, isn't it… still a little young, in that respect…

Hh… please, please — don't land somewhere strange."

That was, by this point, the only thing Zaido could do. Wish.