Chapter 1149 — Tarrond Through Dragonkin Eyes

The arrival of the Dragonkin would in time reshape Tarrond, the Holy Dragon Principality, and the future of the entire draconic race—but at this moment, for those who stood at the heart of the event, what drew their attention first was clearly not some "long-range historical significance," but the shocking, brutal reality laid out before their eyes.

A land torn into pieces, gravity twisted and warped, spatial rifts and surging flows of energy everywhere, and, roaming across this wasteland, maleficent elementals and spirit creatures.

Had this land not been home to giant dragons, it would long since have become a forbidden zone unfit for survival for most mortal species.

Accompanied by Kradore the Red Dragon, Ashalena climbed the tallest watchtower beside Coastal Haven. From there she could look straight down over the whole of Coastal Haven and the vast, desolate wilderness surrounding the town. The sight before her plunged the Dragonmark Witch into a long silence—neither in the memories of her past dragon life, nor in the worst imaginings of Tarrond she had carried with her before setting out, had she ever conceived that a land could be ruined to this degree. The present state of this wasteland far exceeded her expectations.

Only then did she truly realize that the "live footage" Meitzen Ponia had brought to Meeting Room 112 had never been exaggerated to beg for aid—set against the reality, that footage seemed almost gentle. Clearly, after a long blockade and centuries of social stagnation, the dragons of Tarrond had no experience at all in "public relations."

What astonished the Dragonmark Witch even more was that, upon such a wasteland, the great dragons of Tarrond still intended to heal and rebuild their homeland and go on living upon this soil.

"Frankly, this land seems to me utterly unfit for survival," Ashalena said after a soft breath, addressing the old red dragon beside her with a measured gravity. "The price of healing this land would be staggering. For you, the more cost-effective choice would be to leave, and start over somewhere fit for living."

"From a rational standpoint, you are quite right," Kradore said with a laugh and a shake of his head. "But we cannot simply walk away... This land has been our home for over a million years, everything we are lies buried deep in its soil, and no 'fresh start' can sever that. Besides... we still have debts of responsibility unpaid. Whether it is the monsters roaming here or that great tower in the northwest, these are burdens the dragon race must bear."

"Responsibility?" Ashalena said softly, her gaze falling on a tower outside the town, a structure caught in a half-molten state. It had perhaps once been part of some great factory, but now the components and piping that had clung to it had fused into slabs congealed upon the ground, leaving only a warped, battered tower body standing in the cold wind like some jagged skeleton. "...Before I came here, I had guessed at what Tarrond might look like, and in earlier years I, like other Dragonkin, held many fancies about this 'ancestral land of dragons'... But once I arrived, I realized every one of those imaginings was wrong."

Kradore was silent a while, then at last asked the question he had long wanted to ask: "How do the Dragonkin... see Tarrond?"

"If you mean this land, then Tarrond is to us a true yet distant 'story.' We know it exists, but no one knows what it looks like. Our only tie to it is the legends passed down from ancient times—in that legend, we have a homeland, and it lies somewhere we can never reach.

"And if you mean 'pure-blooded dragons of Tarrond' like yourself, then I can only say that many Dragonkin, before learning the truth, loathed you and yearned for you at once; and after learning it, they were moved and resistant in equal measure.

"The Dragonkin hate your 'exile' and your concealment, resent the fate arranged for them, and resent the 'legacy of mission' you took upon yourselves without asking. Yet beneath all that heated feeling, the great majority of Dragonkin know perfectly well how they have survived to this day. Whether we like to admit it or not, our lives come from Tarrond—that is an indisputable fact."

Hearing such a contradictory, tangled answer, Kradore showed no surprise at all; he only said in a low voice, "It seems our unilateral decisions have left too deep a mark on you... And you? Lady Ashalena, how do you see us?"

"Me?" The Dragonmark Witch gave a small laugh. "I have no particular view of you. I am here only to represent my country, to aid another nation in need. It is part of the Alliance's Internal Mutual Aid Act. That is all."

Kradore looked at the young red-haired dragon with some surprise, and after a long while broke into a smile. "I think I understand now why Chief Bayang'er chose you to lead this contingent."

……

After a long voyage, the Wintercold and the fleet it led had at last passed beyond the waters once held by the Eternal Storm. Tarrond was no longer distant, and sights rarely seen around the continent of Loren appeared ever more often along the supply fleet's course—small ice floes drifting far off, seals leaping among the floes to hunt, magical auroras blooming in the sky, and the polar day that forever cycled between noon and dusk. All of it opened the crew's eyes wide, and even Byron himself had begun to marvel at the wonders of nature.

Outside the bridge of the Wintercold, Byron came to the railing of the open connecting gallery. He gazed at a glacier drifting slowly past the fleet, saw more nameless seabirds settle upon it, and at once took up the small arcane-net terminal he had brought from his cabin, using the image-retaining crystal upon it to record the scene upon the sea.

The faint rustle of a serpent's tail sliding over the deck reached his ear, and a somewhat languid, magnetic voice came from beside him: "Recording the seascape again, are we?"

Byron turned and saw a siren with long black hair and a tear-shaped mole at the corner of her eye crawling toward him along the gallery, the tip of her long tail curled around a small water elemental that thrashed and clawed with all its might. He grinned. "Planning to take it home as a gift for my daughter, Lady Cassandra—I promised her before I left that I would record these things for her."

"I can hear how devoted you are to your daughter," said the siren Cassandra, swaying her body like a snake. She seemed to have just returned from the sea and was still adjusting to walking out of the water. Then she abruptly thrust the small water elemental coiled in her tail forward and, in passing, stuck a straw into its head. "Want a sip? Just caught it from the seabed—mixed with a bit of cool meltwater and a magical condensation core unique to the polar regions. Very bracing."

The clawing little water elemental struggled all the harder at once, and a shrill, furious voice came from its churning body: "You are sucking on someone else again! You are sucking on someone else again!"

Byron promptly stepped half a pace back, his mouth twitching, and waved both hands. "No—I really can't stomach the stuff... And I'd advise you not to offer it casually to other humans either. It doesn't agree with our digestive systems."

"What a pity," Cassandra shrugged, casually (with her tail) bringing the water elemental to her lips. She took a deep draught and gave a satisfied sigh. "Water elementals spawned in the Arctic still taste best... full of energy, cold and refreshing—no wonder, when the gods blasted them straight out of the depths of the Elemental Plane... Water elementals from temperate and equatorial regions are far inferior—and after the peace accord was signed, most of them stopped giving us trouble at all. Dreadfully dull."

The little water elemental shrieked again at once: "Shameless! Shameless! I should never have added ice when I came out today!"