Chapter 80 : Chapter 80
In a night sky red as if burning, wyverns fell like a meteor shower upon Bianca Fortress.
“Don’t… don’t run! Fight! Fi—aargh!”
The descending wyverns snatched soldiers from the ramparts, dashing them against the walls or flinging them into the empty air.
As the bodies were crushed on impact, the beasts would land and tear into any others nearby.
Amid the sudden slaughter, Sevha drew his handaxe and yelled, “Eshu, Baren, Tataka! We can’t win if we fight now! Retreat! Save as many men as you can!”
Sevha’s command jolted Eshu, Baren, and Tataka to their senses. Each began to flee with his forces.
Just as Sevha was about to follow, a wyvern landed before him, crushing a soldier beneath its weight.
“…Go on ahead,” Sevha muttered. “I’ll find my own way out.”
Before the wyvern could react, Sevha kicked off the ground and leaped upward. He clung to the nape of its neck and hacked at its head with his handaxe.
The wyvern shrieked and, with a great beat of its wings, soared high above the fortress.
Clinging to the beast as it crossed over the battlements, Sevha looked down.
The panicking and screaming forces gathered in the fortress were being slaughtered. In Sevha’s estimation, if the soldiers could be calmed and brought together, they could have fought off the wyverns.
But the wyverns were not the problem.
We can’t possibly hunt a dragon in this state.
As if in answer, a storm of fire swept over a section of the fortress below.
Dragon breath.
A Scorching Flame Dragon was flying over the fortress, spewing fire. The moment the dragon’s terrible majesty registered in his eyes, Sevha’s body began to tremble.
That was a dragon. The king of all living things. Its mere presence plunged all creatures into terror, and its rule was absolute over any who succumbed.
I learned what kind of creature it was from the books in Anse’s Archive… but this is more than what was written.
Just then, the wyvern Sevha clung to, weakened by blood loss, plummeted into the fortress courtyard.
Sevha rolled away as it crashed to the ground, tumbling to a stop.
Seconds later, countless horses thundered past, their hooves stomping inches from his face. Riding them were Barsh and his Black Knights.
That son of a bitch… causing this mess and then running!
As soon as Sevha got to his feet, a desperate scream came from nearby.
“Get… get back! It’s dragon breath!”
Without looking at the sky, Sevha threw himself behind the wyvern’s corpse.
Instantly, BOOM!
A deafening roar and a storm of fire swept over the area. The inferno incinerated the nearby soldiers and burned the wyvern carcass Sevha used as a shield.
The fire died down, leaving the creature’s body half-charred.
But another firestorm immediately followed.
Knowing he would be burned to death if he stayed in the open, Sevha ran for the fortress’s main keep.
“H-help… help me!”
A soldier running near Sevha was caught by a wyvern and hurled high into the sky.
“M-m-momma!”
A soldier Sevha had just passed was torn to shreds by a wyvern that dropped in front of him.
As Sevha ran through the courtyard, spattered with flesh and blood, the entrance to the keep came into view.
CRASH!
The Scorching Flame Dragon landed on the roof of the keep and stared down at those fleeing for the entrance. The soldiers froze, looking up in shock, but Sevha recalled what he had read about them.
Without meeting its eyes, he screamed, “Don’t look at its eyes!”
Despite Sevha’s warning, the soldiers who saw the dragon’s eyes were seized by an unbearable terror and stopped running. Flames ignited across the dragon’s chest, spreading like veins.
The Scorching Flame Dragon roared, unleashing its breath.
ROOOOAR!
As the firestorm rushed toward him, Sevha grabbed two of the frozen soldiers and pulled them in front of him. Then he ran toward the flames.
“Aaaaaaaaargh!”
The two soldiers he used as shields screamed in agony. Behind them, Sevha was pelted by the flames they couldn’t block and their scattered ashes. In an instant, their bodies were charred black and disintegrated.
Sevha gritted his teeth and threw himself forward, into the entrance of the keep. He tumbled to a stop inside the main building. When he stood, he saw soldiers slumped in the hallway, huddled and trembling.
They couldn’t withstand the fear. They’ve lost their minds.
A dragon’s fear was absolute, an elemental terror for all living things. To see it, to hear its roar, was to feel that fear. To look into its eyes was, nine times out of ten, to be utterly consumed by it.
I wonder if Teresse would know why Dragon Fear exists.
The stray thought that Teresse would have loved to see a dragon was enough to push his own anxiety aside. He walked down the hall, searching for a way out.
CRASH!
From outside came an endless stream of explosions and screams.
CRASH!
Tremors shook the fortress, and window after window shattered.
CRASH!
Through the broken windows, he saw soldiers thrown by wyverns smashed to a pulp against the outer walls, while others, charred black by dragon breath, crumbled to dust.
And just as Sevha reached the stairs leading to the second floor, CRASH!
A part of the first-floor wall crumbled, and the Scorching Flame Dragon thrust its head inside. The soldiers, already half-mad, gave up all hope at the sight and broke into crazed laughter.
ROOOOAR!
The dragon spewed its breath down the hall. As the firestorm engulfed the soldiers and rushed toward him, Sevha scrambled for the second floor.
“Shit…!”
He reached the second floor just as part of its wall shattered and the Scorching Flame Dragon smashed its head through.
The dragon looked in Sevha’s direction and opened its mouth. Embers spilled from its maw.
“Shit!”
Knowing it was pointless to run, Sevha faced the dragon.
His eyes met the beast’s, and his entire body froze. Countless visions of his own death flashed through his mind.
I’m going to die.
Sevha tried to draw on anything from within his mind to push back the fear.
I’m going to die.
Countless memories, countless people, countless things came to mind, but the fear did not recede. His body would not move.
I’m going to die.
But the moment Sevha thought of Diaka—
“Lady Diaka!”
The fear receded. His body moved.
He sprinted toward the Scorching Flame Dragon’s gaping maw. Just as the beast was about to spew its breath, he slid beneath it. Instantly, a firestorm erupted where he had just been.
Without looking back, Sevha kept running and burst out onto the keep’s rooftop. Looking down, he saw countless knights on horseback fleeing the fortress.
What do I do now…
As Sevha searched for an escape, a fierce wind rushed up from behind him, followed by the beat of wings. He looked back to see the Scorching Flame Dragon hovering there, looking down at the roof.
Knowing he had no choice, Sevha gritted his teeth.
And threw himself off the roof.
A moment later, a firestorm swept over the rooftop, and part of the keep collapsed.
Sevha hit the courtyard. He broke his fall and rolled, but a sharp pain shot through him as if his body had been crushed.
As he somehow forced himself to his feet and tried to run—a wyvern dove for him.
Swoosh!
Just when Sevha thought he couldn’t dodge.
“Sevha!”
A javelin pierced the wyvern’s head. The creature’s thrashing created an opening, and Toto charged through.
As Sevha clambered onto the stallion’s back, Tataka sped past on his own mount.
“Run, Toto!”
Toto chased after Tataka’s werewolf.
Sevha scrambled fully into the saddle and yelled, “Tataka! Get in among those fleeing knights!”
“Why?”
“To stay alive, we need to give them other targets!”
Tataka and Sevha picked up speed, weaving into the throng of fleeing knights. Dozens of wyverns followed close behind.
“Keep your head down!”
The wyverns snatched up knights, sometimes horse and all, and flung them high into the air. Horses and riders rained down around Sevha. The falling bodies crushed those they landed on, creating a cascade of death and chaos.
To keep the wyverns at bay, Sevha snatched the bow from Toto’s saddle.
He loosed an arrow, and it struck a wyvern’s wing. The beast lost its balance and fell.
He fired again, and an arrow found a wyvern’s eye. The creature thrashed in agony, collided with another, and the two crashed to the ground together.
“Sevha! Say something, anything!”
“Is this the time for chatter, Tataka?”
“I’m so scared I’m about to piss myself! Just say something!”
At Tataka’s confession, Sevha let out a short, harsh laugh.
While riding Toto and firing his bow, he shouted what he had learned from the books. “A dragon is mentally linked to its young! It knows instantly if something happens to them!”
“So that thing came for revenge for us killing its young?”
“No! It’s here to punish us! Its pride was wounded that an inferior creature killed its offspring!”
In a book on dragon hunting from Anse’s Archive, there is a passage: A dragon, as befits the king of creatures, is arrogant.
A dragon will never tolerate another creature attempting to stand on its level.
“What are these wyverns?” Tataka asked.
“The dragon’s horde! A dragon dominates the monsters around its lair! It brought them with it!”
“There are so many!”
“This is only the winged part of the horde! I don’t know where its lair is, but thousands of monsters are probably on their way here now!”
Tataka’s voice was filled with horror. “If we can’t do something about that dragon before those monsters arrive…”
“They’ll sweep through all of Jershu.”
Just as Sevha revealed the time limit on their Great Hunt, a roar echoed from very close by.
A shadow fell over them. Sevha and Tataka looked up. The Scorching Flame Dragon was flying directly above them, staining the night sky red in its wake.
“Sevha.”
“Yeah.”
“Despite your efforts, I pissed myself.”
“I’ll keep it a secret from Vega!”
Just then, the Scorching Flame Dragon unleashed its breath upon the knights below. The riders and their horses were engulfed in the firestorm, burning as they fell.
“Sevha! What now?”
“I don’t know!”
Then Sevha saw it. A wide, deep river. And a brick bridge crossing it.
The moment he and Tataka met each other’s eyes, they had the same thought.
The Scorching Flame Dragon flew ahead and landed squarely on the bridge.
CRASH!
The knights, thinking only of escape, swarmed onto the bridge, streaming past the dragon on either side. Sevha and Tataka, however, leaped not for the bridge, but for the river.
Just then, the Scorching Flame Dragon spat a fireball.
BOOM!
The fireball exploded, the bridge collapsed, and the knights and their horses were flung, burning, into the water. As Sevha and Tataka fell, flaming bodies flashed past them.
Splash!
They plunged into the deep river. The Scorching Flame Dragon watched the charred corpses float downstream, then took to the sky, flying off to find other things to burn.
Some time later, downstream, where the water was bobbing with charred corpses.
“Pah!”
Tataka pulled himself out onto the riverbank. Following him, Toto and the werewolf dragged out Sevha, who was limp as a waterlogged sack of cotton.
“You should learn to swim, Sevha.”
Toto and the werewolf dropped Sevha on the ground. He spat a stream of water from his mouth and replied, “I’ve been seriously considering it lately.”
Just then, a dragon’s roar sounded in the distance.
“Tataka,” Sevha said, “first we need to join up with our scattered forces.”
“And then?”
First Barsh, and now a dragon. This Great Hunt was full of mighty prey. But whether the prey was a king or a dragon, a hunt was a hunt.
What Sevha had to do had not changed.
“Kill them… all of them.”