Hope in the Right Hand, Anxiety in the Left

The black land dragon was playing with a living flame at the water's edge.

Reacting to the flame skittering at its feet, it sprang and skipped along like a happy dog.

"It's actually pretty cute, watching it like this."

The Demon Lords, watching from behind the brush, felt their faces relax.

Salman gave the thought voice. The others nodded along.

— But —

In the very moment the Demon Lords had collectively granted cute, a tragedy fell upon the living flame.

"Gyau!"

A happy cry. The land dragon's right forepaw flicked out, playfully — and connected directly with the living flame.

The accompanying gust was something else. The head-sized flame was scattered like dust.

"Gya…"

The dragon, I didn't quite mean to do that, froze with its mouth slightly open and looked around. No flame to be found.

Eventually, accepting that it had, in fact, just deleted its toy, the dragon —

"Gyaaa-fuu—"

— let out a deep, regretful sigh.

The Demon Lords behind the brush —

"Hold on. — Oi. — Oi! If we got played with like that we'd be dead!"

"Excuse me! I have complete confidence I'd be dead instantly under that kind of treatment! I would very much like to buy peace of mind here, but does the dragon race accept bribes?"

"They absolutely do not, you know."

"Aaagh! This is exactly why I dislike non-human species — the power of gold is useless against them!"

— full-volume terror.

---

"All right. I'll go. — Probably my fault anyway."

Merea broke from the brush and walked forward.

Brushing leaves aside with a hand, two steps, three.

The dragon, which had been entirely focused on the flame, finally noticed the presences around it. It didn't move, but its eyes, sharp and inquisitive, fixed on the brush-line.

The others didn't have time to stop Merea — he was already out and walking up to it.

"You followed us, then. — Are you all right? Body, I mean."

He stepped fully into the dragon's line of sight.

The dragon clocked him —

"Ngyaa!!"

— let out a higher cry, scrambling onto its feet, ecstatic.

And then —

"Gyaau—!"

— surged forward at full speed. Like a leashless dog, body tipping hard forward toward Merea.

A dog would have been adorable. This was many times the size of a dog.

In the visual moment, it looked very much as if Merea was about to be crushed by the rushing mass.

A few of the Demon Lords leapt out of the brush in panic. Most could only watch with their mouths open.

"O-oi. Calm down."

"Gya! Gyau! Gya gya!"

But Merea was not crushed.

The land dragon's charge — strong enough to topple a great tree — Merea stopped with a single hand. He was pushed back a couple of steps under the momentum, took it casually, and held.

The watching jaws lowered another notch.

"…"

Merea, oblivious to that reaction, stood there as the dragon began running excitedly in circles around him, scratching his cheek with a troubled look.

"— Wh-what do I do…?"

He turned, helplessly, to the others.

The Demon Lords — who had not yet processed the current situation — had no resolution to offer.

Their answer was, in unison —

"How would we know?!"

A demand, pre-emptively, for an explanation of what was happening.

---

Once the dragon settled, Merea explained.

The dragon had a habit of pressing its snout into his back and stomach in passing affection, swaying him forward and back; he conducted the explanation while gently rocking. He went through what had happened in the basement of Shaw's firm.

He had told some of them en route, but not all.

"…Well, anyway, this is awkward."

After finishing, Merea scratched at his cheek again.

He hadn't expected it to follow him. He hadn't been making a deposit when he used Carla's blood. He hadn't even been particularly sentimental — he'd done it on a whim. There had been some sympathy, certainly, but no grand note of good will.

If he had to identify a reason, in fact, it had been an attempt to give Shaw something back, after all the help Shaw had been on the road.

That motive had, evidently, twisted off into something else entirely.

As the cause of the present configuration, he absorbed a little internal scolding.

"He probably stood out, on his way here, no question."

Stroking the dragon's forehead, a small sigh.

One of the cautiously-approaching Demon Lords, eyes still on the dragon, spoke up.

"It would depend on the path he took. But there's no sign here of anyone chasing him, so I'd say we're fine. — More likely, no one would want to get close to a land dragon of this size running through their streets, in the first place."

Shaw. Eyes still locked on the dragon, but his speaking faculty was, evidently, coming back.

"Why not ask him?"

He pointed at the dragon, prompting Merea.

"Yes, fair."

Merea nodded. Then —

"— ■■■, ■■"

— the Dragon Tongue.

The same incomprehensible string. The dragon picked it up as speech and reacted, which confirmed, again, that the man was speaking actual language. The others just waited for the translation.

"■■, ■■■"

"Gya, gyau."

"■■, ■■"

"Gyau."

Merea's Dragon Tongue read, somehow, as heavier than the dragon's vocalisations, and the joins between words were smoother. The dragon's vocalisations, by contrast, had clear voiced consonants, but the line between cry and language on its end was hard to draw.

"Gyau."

"■■"

"Gya, gyau."

"■■■gyau."

"Ah. They've crossed wires," someone said.

Merea, having dropped that last line by what looked like accidental code-mixing, shrugged and switched back to human language.

"You're terrible at Dragon Tongue, you know that…? An actual dragon worse than me at Dragon Tongue is a problem."

White hair fell forward as his head dropped.

"Gya!"

The dragon answered, cheerfully, in any case.

"Land dragon and sky dragon must be slightly different in dialect…"

He glanced up at the sky, half-hoping for a sky dragon's silhouette in the clouds. Just clouds.

"And — what did he say? — Or — is it he? Could be she?"

"Ah, he. — He said: I don't quite know."

Merea brought his face down at an angle and looked at Shaw as he answered.

"Well, then…"

Shaw shrugged. The Demon Lords, in unison, lowered their shoulders.

But Merea hadn't finished.

"That said — confirming what Shaw guessed — he didn't sense anyone tailing him. He's a dragon; on perception alone, that's reliable. He was apparently wild before catching the disease."

A small collective exhale — not disappointment, this time. Relief.

"Mm. Then, for the moment, fine. — For the moment."

Shaw, hand to chin, nodded.

The dragon, by this point, had cooled most of its excitement and was scanning the rest of the group with frank curiosity, evidently trying to memorise faces.

"That's the easy bit. The next bit is the problem. This dragon —"

Shaw caught himself, and tilted his head.

"— Does he have a name? If we keep saying the land dragon, the land dragon and we ever — heaven forbid — run into another, we'll have a labelling problem."

A simple, practical question.

Merea answered immediately —

"■■■"

Shaw and the others didn't quite catch it.

"Sorry?"

"His name."

"Ah—"

Shaw clapped his hands once. Of course.

"Of course, the name is in Dragon Tongue. — So. Translate it nicely into human."

"Translate. Hmm — er…"

Shaw's request had caught Merea off guard. He started groaning over it.

After a beat —

"No… eu… ■■… that's not quite right… uhh…"

Hard concentration on his face. From outside, where the difficulty wasn't apparent, the effort looked faintly comic. But after the Merea who had been radiating killing intent on horseback — this Merea, fretting over a translation, was — almost — a relief.

Suddenly, he brightened.

"…Noel. — Yeah. That's the closest one."

A child's expression, having solved a hard sum.

"Hmm — Noel. Right, then. From here on, we call him Noel."

Shaw gave the glance-around for assent and nodded toward the dragon.

Noel, throughout the back-and-forth between Shaw and Merea, had been tilting his head at intervals, gya? — clearly trying to follow.

By now, the rest of the group's wariness had thinned. The absence of any hostile signal from the dragon was the main reason. Eventually, the Demon Lords were close enough to pat Noel's flank — and from there the meeting on departure could begin.

---

"— At this point, I'd say push straight through."

Shaw, opening the meeting.

The Demon Lords' attention pulled to him. He spoke with hand-and-body emphasis, in his usual catchy cadence.

"Travelling with a land dragon and not drawing attention is going to be hard. Even if we tell Noel to go home, he won't. — He's clearly in heavy debt-mode toward Merea."

Shaw tilted everyone's eye toward Noel.

After the naming, they had asked Noel about his circumstances. The summary: Noel felt a substantial debt toward Merea for the cure. That kind of life-saving, sure. Plus, the rumour about land dragons being scrupulous about debts had just been confirmed.

And along the way they had identified — incidentally — a stubbornness streak.

"Even his saviour asking him to go home does not produce a yes. — He's also separated from his pride, so he has no wild home to return to."

The line landed with something like affinity in the group.

Once you find affinity, abandoning becomes hard.

Noel was not, of course, a Demon Lord — but his circumstances read close enough.

So they decided to take Noel.

"On that basis — we change tactics."

Shaw moved to the main proposal.

"From here to Lemuse territory, about three days. Short, in absolute terms. With three more nights to get through, also slightly long. But, given the situation, I'd argue it's very close."

Coming down off Lindholm and getting here was, on reflection, no small feat. That was the shared sentiment in the group.

"That we still see no shadow of Mūzeg this far means, possibly, their search net hasn't reached this far yet. They may have weighted their search-line toward the Three Kingdoms, expecting us to go that way."

"So the long way around was the right call."

Salman, soberly.

"Not yet certain. But if it is — that's a chance. No telling when Mūzeg will widen their search; pivoting now to speed first is one option. And by happy accident, we now have an extra runner."

Eyes turned to Noel. Noel — bored by the human discussion — was yawning. Caught the attention, head-tilted gya?

"With Noel, all the remaining baggage can ride on him. Frees up the horses."

Noel's strength was on a different scale from a horse's. Even short of full-grown by textbook size, he had a body that could carry both weight and people without slowing. Twenty-two people on his back was not on the menu, but baggage strapped to his sides and chest would absolutely fit.

"So — speed first. Lighten the horses. Push through."

Shaw had hesitated a long time before voicing it.

There was no guarantee this wasn't a Mūzeg trap. They might be deliberately thinning their nets to flush the Demon Lords into the open. They might be planning to spear the prey the moment it got tired and showed itself.

Yet over-cautiousness racked up days. They'd just skipped the first town and moved sharply through Neuce Gauss — being too cautious now would defeat the whole logic of the previous decisions.

In the end, it was a binary. Hit or miss. Two probabilities, both unclear.

The deeper Shaw had thought, the more the trap had felt baited. Even so, he'd kept thinking.

And then he'd decided.

"Three days remaining. — Let's pray and push."

He'd put it forward. The Demon Lords took the proposal, and held a beat to think. To answer without thinking would have been disrespectful to Shaw, who had thought it through.

The group was, broadly, peers. So leaning too heavily on any one person was, by the same logic, disallowed. The fact that they had already leaned on Merea once, very heavily, sharpened that conviction.

"— Right. I'm with you."

A moment, and Salman. First to assent.

"Agreed. I think it's the better choice."

Elma, serious.

"I don't have a god to pray to, but I'm in. We need the resolve. — And I don't intend to regret not having gone hard."

Lilium, eyebrows tipped down in a small smile, shrugging.

The other voices rolled in. By the end, only Merea remained.

The Demon Lords' eyes turned to him.

"This — doesn't have to be a master's answer, does it?"

A wry smile from Merea.

He'd of course intended to answer as Merea Mea, the individual. But — given how the previous beats had run — his answer was, increasingly, also going to read as a leader's answer.

The shape of it had landed by accident. He'd accepted it himself. So he wasn't going to pretend the leadership angle didn't apply.

The Demon Lords answered with firm nods.

"— Right. Then I'll be plain."

Merea stood, and said —

---

"— Let's go. Three days. Let's call this the last hard push."

---

— with a smile on his face designed to lift them.