Chapter 1049 — At Dusk and in the Cold Wind

Only now did Metzen belatedly realize something. She raised her head and saw an enormous facility, like a spiraling mountain, standing quietly in the glow of the setting sun. Pale golden sunlight slanted across its shell, which had melted and then re-solidified, and from its unrecognizable main structure the outlines of former landing platforms and transport pipes could still faintly be made out.

She recognized it at last—this was the incubation factory, the largest breeding facility near Agondor.

"Metzen! What are you standing there for!" The white dragon Noreta's voice came from the hole. She tilted her head back, looking at the blue dragon dazed outside, her tone urging. "Come help me pry open the gate down here—my claws are hurt, I can't move something this big... And why are these gates so sturdy..."

"The two of us won't be able to dig out much on our own," Noreta said, glancing up at the scale of the incubation factory, then immediately shouted toward the opening. "The storage area in the lower levels of the incubation factory is far too large—we could dig until tomorrow and still not be sure of finding the next isolation chamber. We should go back and find more dragons to help!"

The digging deep in the hole finally stopped, and a few seconds later Noreta slowly emerged, a hint of hesitation in her manner. "You're right, but... the camp is short-handed too. Karador probably can't spare many..."

"We'll bring this back with us," Metzen said, lifting the dragon egg container from the ground with her foreclaws—though the egg inside was already broken, she was still careful as she picked it up. "Karador will understand. He's a red dragon, and a very old red dragon... He understands the meaning of dragon eggs better than any other dragon."

...

In the temporary shelter, the dragons had gathered once more. After distributing what supplies they had on hand, they were forced to begin discussing how to keep surviving in these ruins. Karador stood among his kin, listening to each member's thoughts, yet he could not help but sigh inwardly.

Things were heading in a bad direction. He had foreseen it, yet there was nothing he could do.

More and more dragons were showing symptoms of enhancer backlash; others suffered various physical problems caused by implant failure; and nearly all their kin faced the vast "psychological void" left by the loss of the Omega network. Physical weakness, pain, and psychological instability were steadily eroding the will of all his kin. Gathered here, they had become refugees in the truest sense of the word.

And yet... these were dragons.

Powerful dragons, who had once ruled the sky and the earth.

Karador knew that even without implants and enhancers, even without Omega and the automated factories, these weakened dragons before him were still dragons—still among the most powerful beings in the world. In another sense, even, it was by losing their implants and enhancers that they had returned to the way dragons had been in the beginning, back to the "normal range" of their species on the path of evolution. And yet... those words meant nothing now.

The grim struggle for survival was the problem before their eyes.

Amid his sighing, he suddenly thought of Metzen and Noreta, who had been gone from camp for so long—how were the two of them doing?

Karador had just reached this thought when a sudden howl of rushing air came down from high above; he looked up instinctively and saw two figures, one blue and one white, drawing near the camp from afar.

Metzen and Noretta landed at the center of the camp, and the kin around them turned their eyes toward them as one. Noticing that the mood in the camp had turned strange again, Metzen shifted back into human form first, then strode toward Karador.

"Karador, what's going on here now?" Metzen could not help asking. "Trouble with the work assignments again, or the supplies?"

"We're discussing expanding the camp and recovering supplies from the collapsed zone of the Rift," a black dragon said, walking over from the side. "But we lack tools, and we don't have enough hands—the ground is covered everywhere now with molten alloy and polymer that has cooled and set into slabs. We can't very well dig a new camp out with our claws..."

Metzen listened, but her gaze traveled across the whole camp. Weary faces and scarred bodies passed through her view one after another, and at last she saw the white dragon Noretta, still in her dragon form, standing on the open ground and carefully cradling a container in her foreclaws.

"Why can't we use our claws?" Metzen suddenly raised her voice. She stared at the black dragon who had spoken, then looked to Karador and the other dragons around her. "Use your claws. Use your teeth. And your breath, your magic—aren't these powerful enough? If humans on the continent of Loren can manage it, what is there that dragons here cannot do—just because the environment is harsher?"

A nearby dragon opened his mouth as if to say something, but Metzen gave no one the chance to speak. She walked straight to Noretta's side and pointed at what the other held in her foreclaws, saying loudly, "This is what we just dug out with our claws!"

"That is..." Only then did Karador notice what Noretta was holding, and his eyes widened instinctively. "That's from the hatchery..."

"It's a dragon egg. It was already broken when we dug it out—but there are still thousands upon thousands of dragon eggs in the hatchery, and many storage vaults that have not yet been excavated. There must be eggs in there that can still be saved," Metzen said rapidly. "This is what I'm saying—we need help. No matter how many helpers come, even one is enough. Come help us dig those eggs out of the ruins. Who's willing to go?"

A brief silence fell over the camp, and then at last a low murmur of discussion and stirring began to rise, and one gaze after another came to rest on that container covered in scars and dust, on the cracked dragon egg within.

Metzen looked at the owners of those gazes, and in them she finally saw a little light and warmth again. She lifted her head, wanting to say something more, but at that very moment she suddenly saw a bright arc streak across the distant sky.

A blazing meteorite abruptly lit up the dusk, falling toward the northwest of Agundor.