Chapter 1047 — Victory Day

The cold wind from the coastline howled past, whipping up dust that had only just cooled on the barren land. The light of the giant sun slanted across the devastated earth, and even the dragon's scales were gilded with a rippling halo. The blue dragon, newly woken from sleep, stood dumbly in that staggering wasteland; for the first few minutes she remained in a dazed state of "Who am I, where am I, who beat me like this, and who did I beat up in turn."

A gust of wind swept by, and Metzen unconsciously swayed her long neck. Something black and round was blown down from a nearby mound of earth — perhaps by some coincidence, perhaps by fate itself — and she found it was part of the lamp from her bedroom.

"Where's my house... my great big house... and my dragon nest, my balcony... my..."

Her mind, only just back in operation, could not yet process such an enormous quantity of information; the blue dragon newly woken from sleep fell into a brief confusion of thought. But as time passed, the dragon's formidable constitution began to assert itself, the damage to her nervous system repairing itself at astonishing speed, and those memories as muddled and indistinct as dreams finally grew clear, resolving out of absurd, distorted impressions into their true shape — Metzen's stunned, bewildered expression was gradually replaced by silence; her gaze turned grave, and when she looked again upon the ruins before her, she seemed a different dragon altogether.

Just then, a sound of beating wings came from nearby, waking Metzen from her brooding.

The blue dragon lady jerked her head up and looked toward the sound, and in the next second her eyes filled with delight — a familiar figure, white from head to tail, was sweeping past high above, gazing about as though searching for something. Metzen could not help but let out a roar at the sky, and the white dragon shape finally spotted the figure amid the wreckage, and immediately began descending toward her.

Moments later, with a gust of wind and a tremor, the white dragon landed at the edge of the ruins. Metzen had finally gathered her strength and struggled free from a heap of broken walls, and, enduring the wounds all over her body, ran toward her friend — halfway there she shifted back into human form, which helped reduce the drain and conserve her strength.

The white dragon Noretta kept to her dragon form, and only when Metzen came before her did she lower her head: "Thank goodness — you're actually still alive!"

"...So it seems only a small portion of our kind survived," Metzen caught the other meaning in her friend's words at once. Her eyelids drooped, but she quickly raised her head again. "Either way, it's good to see you."

"And you as well," Noretta said, head lowered, her voice deep and gentle. "It looks like you've come back to your senses? How much do you remember?"

"I'm not sure. My head is still muddled, but I remember many fragments from when the final battle broke out... I remember falling from the sky at the end, but I was lucky enough to survive. I remember a firestorm too..." Metzen murmured, pressing her hand to her forehead. "Now all the voices have gone — the gods', Omega's... I've never in my life felt my mind so quiet. It's so quiet I'm not used to it."

"Everyone who survived feels that way. We'll get used to it, slowly," Noretta lowered her head and gently touched her friend's hair with her jaw. "I woke earlier than you. I know how this goes."

"Survived..." Metzen could not help saying softly. "How many survived? Has everyone gathered somewhere? What's the situation now?"

"Not many survived. They're scattered all over the battlefield, but the ancient dragons who survived in the Council and the Senate are trying to restore order and gather our people — I was sent out to look for survivors, and a dozen or so others like me, less badly wounded, are patrolling nearby," Noretta said, lowering one wing to signal Metzen to climb onto her back. "The situation is complicated, and there's far too much to explain. Get on. I'll take you to where everyone is staying for now, and we'll talk on the way."

Metzen looked at her friend's back, tilted toward her, and there among the white dragon's elegant white scales she could plainly see a hideous wound — though it had already begun to heal, it was still shocking to behold.

Metzen knew her own wounds were surely worse, but she still shook her head hesitantly: "Never mind. You're in no better shape than I am..."

"You never used to be so polite with me," Noretta said, a hint of teasing in her tone, and lowered her wing again. "Are you getting on or not? I'll tell you, chances like this don't come often — miss this one and there may not be a next..."

"You said it!" Metzen glared at the white dragon, then gritted her teeth and stepped up onto her friend's broad back.

With a tremor, she felt herself leave the ground and embrace the sky once more — the protective barrier dragons opened automatically in flight blocked the ceaseless howling wind, and only when the wind stopped did Metzen belatedly realize this: "The wind is so cold... it feels like it's blowing straight off the ice ocean..."

"Of course. The Great Shield has gone dark, and the whole continent is now exposed to polar climate — we've also lost almost all the weather controllers and tide controllers. From here on, Talrond's climate will only get worse."

Metzen did not answer. She only stepped carefully forward over the white dragon's scales, coming to the great dragon's shoulder blade, and poked her head out to look down — and so, for the first time from high above, she saw Talrond as it was now, saw the true face of this postwar wasteland. Agundor had been utterly destroyed; the ranges of high mountains at the city's edge had collapsed like sandcastles after a gale; the ancient palaces and temples had become shattered bricks and broken tiles strewn among crags and rifts; the ruins, battered by waves of searing heat, were scorched everywhere, and a terrifying fissure ran from the heart of the city all the way toward the coastline.

And the wreckage of dragons and all manner of war machines lay scattered across that desolate land, like ink spots on a doomsday platter.

Metzen could not help pressing her lips together: "...It's all gone... even the Council's headquarters is gone. Not a single intact roof in sight."

"Nothing can stand before the wrath of the gods and remain whole," Noretta's voice came from ahead. "We survivors are already the greatest fortune in all of Talrond."

The wrath of the gods...

Metzen could not help repeating the phrase in her mind, and the things steeped in the deepest reaches of her psyche rose up bit by bit, making her emotions more tangled still. After several minutes of silence she finally could not help asking: "So... we won?"

"It seems so," Noretta answered. "You can no longer hear the gods' voices, can you? Nor do you hear or see those unnameable visions... Neither do I. Everyone has shaken off that omnipresent erosion of the mind — that is the proof of victory. Elder Duke Moore has already proclaimed the victory at the gathering point... Yes. We won."

"Won... the greatest of all miracles, and we actually won..." Metzen could not help murmuring softly, unsure whether to rejoice or grieve.

She did not know how to describe what she felt now — the final battle. Every dragon knew, in the deepest layer of their minds, that such a day would come. Though no dragon had ever openly proclaimed it, nor any admitted it would happen, this doomsday war — to many of dragonkind little different from myth and legend — hung over the whole race like a curse. Every member of the race, from the moment the resonance core was implanted and they could think for themselves, knew it would come sooner or later.