Chapter 880 — Touching the Boundary
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
A spreading pale blue halo rippled outward from around the inspection gate. Accompanied by the voice announcement of the AI Omega, the barrier opened, and the great gate leading to Thalond steadied itself before Noretta.
The white, elegant dragon beat her wings and glided gracefully through the navigation light ring before the gate. The barrier entrance contracted and sealed behind her, shutting out the howling cold air of the far northern ice ocean.
Noretta lowered her head, savoring the comfortable temperature shaped by the weather controller. Verdant mountains and hills stretched across her field of view, and the low-altitude transit network linking city to city lay interlaced across the land. In this familiar scenery of her homeland, she drew a deep breath, letting all four of her biological lungs and her two mechanical lungs steep in the clean, warm air.
Thalond was springtime eternal—at least for the past four thousand years. But in earlier ages this continent had been covered in ice and snow, or strewn with molten seas of fire. The dragons, a race caged within a cage, their long civilization as tedious as their long lives; over spans measured in millennia, the Senate reset the weather controller roughly every ten thousand years to change the continent's "appearance," and in the current cycle Thalond's "theme" was spring.
Such changes were among the few permitted "mischief" acts under the gods' watchful eyes. They meant nothing, yet the dragons never tired of them.
Idle thoughts flickered through her mind. Noretta began to descend, circling once around the outer mountain barrier before flying straight toward Agondor, seat of the Mithril Vault headquarters, nestled among the towering peaks.
Amid the towering ranges, the magnificent Agondor bathed in dim sunlight. The long day was nearing its end, and the giant sun that had ruled the sky for nearly half a year was, through day after day of rise and fall, gradually tending toward the horizon. The white dragon flew through the sunset glow toward a splendid palace atop the mountain summit. The wall along one side of the palace had already opened automatically, and a broad landing platform extended outward...
Noretta settled smoothly onto the landing platform and flexed her wings, slightly weary from the long flight. Then she heard a shrill cry rise from beneath her feet: "Hey! You're stepping all over me!"
The white dragon paused in place for a moment before slowly lowering her head to look beneath her. She saw a figure in a pale violet dress frantically wriggling out from under her enormous dragon claw. Several seconds more passed before she spoke, slowly, in a tone devoid of surprise: "Metzen—why are you standing on the platform?"
"I just landed here and hadn't had time to move away!!" Metzen finally squeezed free and immediately threw back her head to shout at her old friend. "There's nothing wrong with your eyes—didn't you see me?!"
The white dragon lowered her head: "...No."
"...This is revenge. You're far too vindictive," Metzen burst out complaining loudly. "Just because I accidentally stepped on you once last time, you actually went out of your way to step back..."
Noretta said nothing, only lowering her head quietly to watch her friend go on and on. When the other finally quieted a little, she said unhurriedly, "I saw a book in the human world. About a knight and an evil dragon. Some of the stories in it looked rather familiar."
Metzen, mid-complaint, went abruptly silent. A long while passed before she raised her head awkwardly: "Probably... probably just some story those human bards made up these past couple of years?"
"It's a story from several hundred years ago. A reprint," Noretta said, watching the small figure below without blinking, her dragon claw shifting as though absently. "And it seems quite popular."
Metzen muttered at once: "Damn it... I thought humans were supposed to be forgetful..."