1st day, 4th month, 1,547th year, Continental Calendar
It was the day after the Lunarian Orthodoxy's Spring Announcement Festival was
held.
The Spring Announcement Festival yesterday had been pretty lively, so the castle
town would be busily cleaning up after it today. I was spending the day in the
governmental affairs office, staring down a single piece of paper.
Liscia, who had just come into the room, looked suspiciously at me and asked, "Is
something the matter, Souma?"
"Hmm? Oh, I was looking at this." I showed Liscia the piece of paper I had been
staring at.
The piece of paper had three characters, or symbols, something that I couldn't
make sense of, lined up on it. Starting from the left there was "an arrow-like triangle
pointing to the left, combined with a square;" "two vertical lines and something
made with a vertical line with five horizontal lines crossing it;" and "an umbrellashaped symbol."
Liscia looked sideways at the piece of paper I'd given her. "What's this?"
"It's apparently a portion of the Lunalith oracle that Merula saw."
Merula Merlin had come along with Souji Lester, the bishop we'd invited as a
countermeasure against the Lunarian Orthodoxy. Her research primarily focused on
spirits and magic, and her long years of research had produced an incredible wealth
of knowledge, so I had welcomed her with open arms.
Now Merula was at Genia the overscientist's laboratory where there was all sorts
of equipment available.
It seemed curse ore, which absorbed magic, was a very interesting subject of
research for Merula. She and Genia were spending day after day together, engrossed
in their research.
What sort of chemical reaction would the meeting of overscientist and magic
researcher have on this country? I was kind of looking forward to it, and kind of
worried...
Something had happened the first time I'd met Merula.
The oracle she'd said had appeared on the Lunalith came up in conversation, and
when I asked her for details, Merula shook her head in disappointment.
"They call it an oracle, so I think what appeared was text; but it wasn't in a writing
system from any country in this world, so I couldn't figure out what it said. If I'd had a
little more time, I might have at least been able to figure out if they were phonographs
or ideographs, but..."
It seemed she hadn't had the time to properly commit it to memory. Her life had
been in danger, so I could hardly blame her for that.
When I asked her if there was anything she remembered, no matter how minor,
she'd said, "It really is just a small fraction, but I recall... it went like this..."
And then she'd written these three incomprehensible characters or symbols onto
a piece of paper. Merula's memories were vague, so these probably were exactly as
she'd seen them.
In the end, the only thing we knew was that these sorts of incomprehensible
characters or symbols had appeared as an oracle.
Liscia seemed to realize something and said, "Ah...! If the writing isn't from this
world, could it be from yours?"
"Yeah," I said. "That was something I suspected, too, but I've got absolutely no
idea what they are..."
I couldn't claim familiarity with every writing system on Earth, obviously, but I
could at least say that in more than a decade of living in Japan, I had no recollection
of seeing this kind of writing (?) before. The one in the middle might look a bit like
the kanji for "pray" or "samurai" if you looked at it the right way, but as for what the
arrow-like one that came before it, and the umbrella-like one that came after it
were... I had no idea.
I gave up and put the piece of paper away inside the governmental affairs office's
desk. "Well, even if I could read just three characters of it, it wouldn't do me any
good. I can't neglect my duties just because I'm curious about it, after all. Let's forget
about it for now."
And so, Liscia and I got started on my paperwork for the day, but... I had one of
the consciousnesses I had split off thinking about it.
Events sometimes took place outside the Kingdom of Friedonia. If something
bothered me, when it was a domestic matter, I could bring on new people, assign
personnel to the issue, and assign a budget to get it investigated. I had my position
as king, after all.
However, when it was in another country, I couldn't investigate.
If it was something the relevant country had already investigated, it was possible
I might acquire the information through diplomacy or espionage. However, if they
hadn't investigated it yet, I had no means of acquiring information about that matter.
Because it was another country, I couldn't dispatch a team to investigate, either.
What if, included in that information this country couldn't get its hands on, there
was something that could decide the fate of our own nation? What if we found out
about it too late? Whenever I thought about that, I felt unable to sit still.
The world was not complete with just one country. Especially if I was staying
inside the castle, it was only natural that there would be things I couldn't find out
that way. I still... had so much to learn about this world.
I need to learn more. Much more, about many different countries...
While swamped with government work, that was what I thought about.
◇ ◇ ◇
It was a mysterious space.
It was as if I were in an abyss where no light seemed to reach; or perhaps I had
been thrown out into deep space, in a place where I was unable to tell up from down.
I was floating in the middle of that space.
I could breathe properly. But my thinking felt hazy somehow.
Oh... This is probably a dream. I'm in a dream world.
Sometimes while dreaming, I would realize it was a dream.
When I was sleeping at something like a kotatsu, where it was hard to fall fully
asleep, I would realize it was a dream and think that I needed to wake up quickly,
see a dream of waking up, realize I was dreaming again, dream of waking up... and it
went on like that. That was close to how I felt right now.
While I was drifting along in that dozing state, a light suddenly appeared before
me.
The light gradually grew larger, eventually reaching many tens of times my own
size. The light that grew to a massive size eventually began to form into something.
As it took form, the once strong light gradually weakened. And then...
What appeared before my eyes was one massive silver dragon.
Its sense of presence was overwhelming. It had curled horns like a goat. Claws
and fangs that looked like they could rend steel. Powerful wings spread wide. Its
body was covered with a smooth silver fur, and its blue eyes seemed gentle
somehow. It was a dragon that was masculine, and yet felt motherly.
I had been told that wyverns and dragons were completely different before, but...
now I could understand. This creature was so dazzlingly divine that it felt absurd to
compare it to a wyvern.
"Could it be that you're... Mother Dragon?" I asked.
It was a hunch. I had heard of this before. They said there were sentient dragons
living in the Star Dragon Mountain Range, and they were ruled by a beautifully
massive white dragon. The dragon before my eyes was so beautiful I would have
described her as a silver dragon, not a white one, but she fit the image of Mother
Dragon perfectly.
Mother Dragon neither confirmed nor denied, but her unswerving eyes that
stared into mine told me the answer was "yes."
Then Mother Dragon stretched that long neck of hers. Even just her head on its
own was incredibly big, and if she had felt like it, she could easily have swallowed
me whole right there. I panicked a little, but my body didn't move, as if it was sewn
in place.
Fortunately, Mother Dragon's head didn't open its mouth as it approached, and
her large nose just came up close to my chase. Then she gently inhaled through her
nostrils. We stayed like that for a short while, and then Mother Dragon slowly pulled
her head away from me.
"You who have a familiar smell," she spoke.
Huh?! I thought, shocked.
I heard a voice. It had the tone of a gentle elderly woman. Was this Mother
Dragon's voice, maybe? I thought that it might be, but she hadn't opened her mouth.
"You who have a familiar smell."
I'd heard it again. Yes, I definitely felt like it was coming from Mother Dragon's
direction.
"This... voice that seems to be speaking directly to my brain, is it yours?" I asked.
Mother Dragon looked as if she had nodded. "This is the only way we can talk
when in dragon form."
"That's interesting..."
What a mysterious ability it was. I didn't know if it was communication magic or
perhaps telepathy, but, well, this was a dream, so anything worked, I guess. But still...
having a conversation with Mother Dragon in my dream was like something out of
an old fantasy movie.
"...Could it be that you're showing me this dream?" I asked.
"No," she spoke. "This is a dream, yet it is not a dream. By synchronizing our
consciousnesses, I gave birth to a pseudo-dream, and thus was able to create a space
for us to talk like this."
Mother Dragon explained all that as if this were all very natural.
Synchronization of consciousness, pseudo-dreams... The scenery was like
something out of a fantasy movie, but the vocabulary coming up was awfully
systematic. It was almost like she was familiar with science fiction.
I had heard there were intelligent dragons in the Star Dragon Mountain Range,
and I had assumed that intelligence was just enough that they could speak like
humans, but maybe their intelligence far transcended that of the races of mankind. If
that was the case, what an unfathomable country they were.
"...So, Madam Mother Dragon, why is it that you've arranged for us to meet this
way?" I addressed her as I would a queen, doing my best to feign composure.
Even though I'd asked just to see what she'd say... I had some idea why she had
contacted me.
It had to be the Mechadra, the thing which Genia had gone and made out of the
bones we'd excavated. If the Star Dragon Mountain Range got angry at us, saying,
Don't play with the remains of our kind, our country would have no choice but to
offer an earnest apology. Meeting a real dragon for the first time, I was able to
reaffirm one thing for myself: We had to be sure we never made enemies of them.
It was said that the monster that a dragon's remains could turn into, a skull
dragon, was able to destroy an entire country, wasn't it? That probably meant that
dragons had that much potential to begin with. It helped me to understand why even
at the height of their power, the Empire hadn't been able to lay a hand or a foot on
the Star Dragon Mountain Range. Or rather, it was reckless that they'd ever decided
to pick a fight with beings like this in the first place.