Astonishment, Admiration, Lament

A dragon.

A 〈Land Dragon (Reirnote)〉.

Four legs. Black scales. A long, thick, plainly-strong tail. Wings shaped to cut wind — the distinct land-dragon profile.

A sharp, edged form that announced strength the moment you saw it.

"Gyafu—"

— and an unexpectedly silly cry.

For one beat, the cry struck Lilium as faintly cute. The rest of the creature was, however, unmistakably a land dragon. Even with formula-magic at her disposal, an actual fight with this would be a death sentence.

"—"

Lilium nearly let out a shriek matching the gya- — but slapped both hands over her mouth and managed to swallow it.

A loud noise was, on every count, a bad idea. A woman's high cry carried; it could startle the dragon. And the others were still asleep on the far side. Waking them with a scream would have made for an unkind morning.

"Pf—"

About ten seconds passed in that frozen tableau.

"— Hh!"

The two sets of eyes had been on each other for ten seconds. Finally she let her breath out.

The body's impulse to shriek had drained off elsewhere.

She lowered her hands.

"D-don't startle me!"

A little louder than she'd meant — but, given the alternative, not bad. At least it wasn't a scream.

---

The reason she could speak at all was that, in those ten seconds, Lilium had read off the dragon's eyes and posture that there was no hostility in it. If anything — almost a familiar note.

Which was, by any measure, mystifying. She'd never faced a land dragon at close range, much less been acquainted with one.

In truth, the absence of hostility was because the dragon recognised her.

Yes — to put a name to the thing — this was the same black-scaled land dragon Merea had cured of 〈Fatal Draconic Disease〉 in the basement of the Sherwood Firm.

Lilium herself had been asleep through that whole episode, drained from over-using her living-flame formula. She had heard about the dragon-cure later, second-hand, but had never seen the dragon. So the dragon in front of her did not, on her side, immediately click as that dragon.

"Gya."

The dragon's pleased note. It stretched its neck and looked around, scanning.

An I'm searching for something sort of motion.

"You looking for someone?"

"Gyau."

The dragon's purpose, in fact, was to find the human who had saved it.

It had run on the scent off the discarded clothes at the firm — got lost more than once — but had finally arrived in the right area.

Seeing Lilium had clinched the location for it. The dragon remembered her face: when it had been at its weakest, sleeping near the man who'd saved it, that woman had been sleeping right there too.

The dragon races sometimes display intelligence above the human level. This dragon, young as it was, was no exception.

"Gya."

"What."

"Gyau."

"Speak human."

"Gya, gyau…"

Ten seconds was, for Lilium, all it took to be back to herself.

Composure restored, native fighting spirit back, she addressed the dragon as she would address anyone.

There was the language barrier; she wasn't really catching what it was saying. But the dragon was clever, and tone alone seemed to do most of the work. She started to suspect the dragon understood human speech well enough.

The dragon, for its part, was visibly intimidated by Lilium's energy. The crimson-haired human was looking it directly in the eye, and the dragon — to her surprise — pulled its neck in and stepped back.

Watching it, Lilium found —

"…Ah. Sorry. I didn't mean it that strongly."

— that she was looking at a child.

A small flicker of guilt — like accidentally scolding a child you didn't mean to scold. She found it strange about herself, but the read seemed accurate enough.

"…Why is the human soothing the dragon, exactly…"

This couldn't go on like this. The dragon clearly had business in the area, and — fortuitously — the group included an eccentric who could speak Dragon Tongue.

A bit early to be waking him; but emergencies took precedence. She'd have to.

She let out a sigh, and set on her face, for the dragon's benefit, a soft smile.

She looked, in that moment, like a sister who couldn't say no to her younger brother — or like a woman who'd been hooked by a gigolo and couldn't quite cut him loose.

"All right, all right. — Wait here. We have a weirdo who can speak dragon, conveniently. I'll go fetch him."

"Gya?"

"It's fine. I'll bring him. — But you stay there. If you come along, half the camp's hearts will fall out of their mouths."

The dragon's questioning look got a clean answer. There was no version of this where she could bring it. The combat-confident among the Demon Lords would still be rattled; the non-combat ones would faint.

She turned to leave — and heard the heavy scrape of something dragging along the gravel.

"Stay."

"Gya. — Gya-fu…"

She wheeled on the dragon — who had been quietly trying to follow — and put hard intent into her face. The dragon, again intimidated, sank obediently down to the ground.

"Honestly… here. Play with this."

She raised her right hand, summoned a fist-sized living flame, and tossed it underhand at the dragon.

A bouncing-along living flame.

Considerably bigger than the watch-firelight version. Dragon-sized, effectively. Realising, thanks to those two idiots, that the watch-flames could double as toys, she'd developed the format.

"— Right. You're cut from the same cloth as those two. Easy to handle, at least."

Glad and sad both. A small sigh, a small wry smile. The dragon was already happily romping with the flame.

---

She left the dragon to its game and pressed back into the brush where the others were sleeping.

Pushing through the leaves, she heard quiet whispers ahead. Someone was already up.

She brushed the largest leaf aside and stepped into the resting-place.

"All right, listen — quick—"

Her voice came out — and stopped.

"—"

In the centre of her vision —

"Wh-wh-wh-what's — the matter, Lilium-sama?"

— Marisa, mid-attempt to slide her thigh under sleeping Merea's head as a pillow.

---

Marisa had both hands on Merea's head, frozen in the position of attempting a lap pillow.

Beside her, the slight-built Aiz, eyes lit. Past them, the blue-silver-haired twins, hands already in Merea's snow-white hair, well into a pair of small braids.

"…"

Lilium parked the twins as a separate question and turned a sticky, flat-eyed look on Marisa — what. Are you doing. The look did the work.

"Th-this is — well — Merea-sama would have been inconvenienced without a pillow, would he not, so it occurred to me — and seeing as I had, ah, reasonable confidence in the softness of my thigh, well — that is to say, the situation is —"

Marisa, who normally never broke her cool ice-statue beauty, was visibly flapping. Her face was, additionally, red. This was, possibly, the first time Lilium had seen her like this.

And then — Lilium caught sight of the lump of cloth lying off to one side of Merea's head.

That was the pillow. The pillow Merea had been using.

Marisa had, evidently, removed it for her own purposes.

Which made Merea-sama would have been inconvenienced without a pillow —

"…"

"…"

Marisa's eyes were darting. Plain I am rumbled body language.

Aiz, beside her, casually slid the lump of cloth behind her own back. — Ah. Accomplice.

She knew Aiz had a strong streak of curiosity. Probably she'd just been interested in the spectacle of a lap pillow. Or — equally possible — Aiz had been the one to suggest it to Marisa in the first place. Innocent as a daisy. For all her slight frame, that girl had the most stomach in the group, by general consensus.

In any case —

"…Hh."

— a sigh first.

Internally, Lilium was rewriting her image of Marisa rather significantly.

"…You're surprisingly normal, you know."

"I-is that so?"

She watched Marisa's still-faintly-red face.

"Not in a bad way. If anything, it's — yes — a compliment."

The maid Lilium had pegged as something deeply unusual was, in this particular axis, possibly the most ordinary of the group.

— Although that girlishness might also be the reaction of being a Demon Lord.

She knew Marisa had pledged unilateral fealty to Merea. The reason behind it was unconfirmed; Lilium had guessed it was tied to Marisa's Demon Lord background. They weren't yet close enough for Lilium to ask, but this small accident had narrowed the gap considerably.

— And it isn't only fealty, is it.

Watching Marisa now, Lilium had that thought. The instant she had it, a faint odd note rose in her own chest — too faint to identify what it was. So she let it pass.

She switched to a teasing tone instead.

"— Bold move, all the same."

"— !"

At Lilium's smirking line, Marisa flinched — and Merea's half-raised head dropped from her hands.

A dull tonk.

"Ah."

"Ah—"

Lilium and Marisa's blank syllables overlapped. Marisa, mortification on her face, immediately picked Merea's head back up — and, with a far more natural motion, settled it onto her thigh.

"I-I'm so sorry — what have I—"

She started gently rubbing the spot of impact.

The end result was the lap-pillow she had been after. She had clearly, by this point, forgotten that.

Lilium, watching Marisa's distinctly-girlish flap, recovered her purpose.

"— Sorry to interrupt, but — I need to borrow Merea for a moment."

Merea, perhaps in response to the impact to his head, let out a quiet groan and started to wake.

---

By the time Lilium had explained about the dragon, the rest of the group was awake too, and the consensus was that everyone would go and see the dragon together.

Sending Merea — the group's strongest combatant — off alone, while leaving the rest of them in a separate location, sat poorly. In his absence, what if? — that scenario didn't not have weight.

Stepping in front of a land dragon was, on the other hand, a real fear for the non-combat Demon Lords. But Lilium's word that the dragon had no hostile intent helped them brace, and they came along.

As Lilium led the way back through the brush, Shaw drew up beside Merea, fingers already at his brow as though he had a headache coming.

"Listen. — I have only bad premonitions about this. I will say it pre-emptively. From what Lady Lilium has described — that is, almost certainly, the dragon."

"It's not a premonition any more, is it. You just said certainly."

Merea's head dipped. He happened, internally, to agree.

Shaw threw an elbow on Merea's shoulder, leaning a little.

"Question, then. Did our land dragon leave the firm peacefully, do you think? Zaido is not the kind of merchant who allows his merchandise to walk out of his front door uncontested. He's the same line of business as me. He doesn't part with stock unless the situation has exceeded his control. — What state would the firm have to be in for Zaido to lose control?"

"…"

Merea pictured it, and then could not bring himself to describe the picture out loud.

"Aaah… weakened to the point where neither food nor water could pass the throat. Then, somewhere along the way, someone heals it. Recovery. The body is very hungry — it has not eaten properly for days. — Oh, what's this — there happens to be a fascinating assortment of foodstuffs all around—"

Shaw began narrating, in mock-theatrical mode.

Merea remembered, with mounting cold sweat, that the basement of the Sherwood Firm had indeed contained substantial amounts of food.

"Convenient. Let's eat. — A dragon does not consider human profit-and-loss. An adult dragon might have factored that in. This dragon was clearly young. — Ahhhh… aaaaaagh…"

The narration didn't make it to the end. Shaw had imagined the picture for himself and was visibly sinking.

The weight on Merea's shoulder grew heavier; Merea bore him up, gently, by way of consolation.

"What are the two of you doing?"

Lilium, turning back, watched with an exasperated look.

Then —

"O — there it is."

— she turned her gaze forward and pointed.

Beyond her finger —

"Ah. Yeah, that's the one."

It had grown a great deal larger than Merea remembered from the firm's basement, but Merea couldn't mistake it.

The high obsidian black of the scales. The recognisable face.

Merea had spent enough time with the sky dragons at Lindholm's summit to read dragon faces with the same individual specificity as human faces.

Hearing Merea's clean yes, Shaw — still leaning on the shoulder —

"It's bigger, though, isn't it… Did it just eat the entire stock in the firm's basement to get like this? Aaaaaaah… aaaaaaagh… …That's a guaranteed loss now! Aaaaaaaaaagh!"

— quietly collapsed, lamenting.