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.
While I was feeling a cold sweat running down my back, Mother Dragon seemed to be smiling slightly.
“I have nothing to say about that.”
“Huh?!” Did she read my mind?!
“I told you, this is a place created by the synchronization of your mind and my own. Even without speaking, you should be able to hear my voice.”
“…” …So we can communicate just by thinking, is that it?
When I chose to think what I wanted to say, without putting it into words, Mother Dragon nodded.
Well, damn. We weren’t just having a heart-to-heart; what was in our heads was open to the other party.
There could be no fairer place to negotiate, but it meant that I couldn’t lie to her, either. No, maybe as great as Mother Dragon was, she was good enough to tell lies in her own heart? When I thought that, Mother Dragon shook her head.
“Even I cannot do that. No creature can lie in their heart.”
“Is that right?” I asked.