Devastation

 

There is nothing their claws cannot rend.

There is nothing their fangs cannot crush.

There is nothing their breath cannot annihilate.

With but a single exception.

 

First strike, first victory.

"Magic Bullet times ten thousand!"

I wrung out every last drop of magical power I possessed and unleashed it all at once. The summoned masses of destruction hurtled toward my great-grandfather, trailing dazzling tails of light as though a sun had appeared upon the earth.

No matter how fast a fire dragon could fly, it couldn't reach top speed instantaneously, and no creature that massive could maneuver nimbly. There was no way that enormous body could evade magic bullets faster than arrows that homed relentlessly on their target.

The blinding flash bleached my vision white, then gradually faded as color seeped back into the world.

What lay before me left me speechless.

"That itched."

My great-grandfather hadn't dodged. He hadn't so much as flinched. He stood in the exact same posture as before, without a single wound on his body.

You've got to be kidding me…

I hadn't exactly expected that to finish him, but I certainly hadn't expected zero damage either.

A magic bullet was a spirit of destruction without will — pure magical energy given form. Not heat, not combustion, but a concentrated mass of raw power. I'd already confirmed it could pierce even a fire dragon's scales.

Which meant the reason my great-grandfather was unscathed was brutally simple.

The magical power cloaking his scales while he did absolutely nothing exceeded my full output.

"I don't understand."

My great-grandfather did not attack. He simply murmured, almost to himself.

"From what I can see, that white one is what we seek. Hand it over, and this ends."

"I… cannot do that."

I cut short the briefest flicker of hesitation and answered.

"Is it because she is not the one who killed your mother?"

I groaned involuntarily. He'd hit the mark.

"It beggars belief, but if that is indeed the case, your peculiar behavior begins to make sense. If it was a human who killed Reikurusemusuweifraryerudofjyarurinu, then we must exterminate them to the last."

My great-grandfather spoke as though this were self-evident.

"… However. A promise is a promise. I swore that if you surrendered the white one, I would not kill the humans. On these scales and this flame, I do not break my oath."

That, too, was something I'd anticipated. In all likelihood, even now, if I handed Ai over, they would honor their word.

"I cannot fathom why you cling so fiercely to such diminutive creatures that you even mimic their form. I truly cannot fathom it… but it is not entirely beyond my comprehension. Your mother was the same. Eccentric dragons are not unheard of… However."

He turned his gaze to Ai, and when he spoke again, his voice was almost gentle.

"Why do you shield that dragon as well? Merely because the charge is unjust, why would you sacrifice not only the humans you wish to protect, but your very life?"

"That's…"

I faltered for an instant.

Ai truly hadn't done anything. I couldn't pin the blame on her.

That much was sound logic.

But was that worth it? Putting Yuuki. Rin. Chryse… and Nina. Putting my precious family on the line, was this really the right choice?

Of course it wasn't. I wasn't that fair-minded a person.

The reason I'd chosen this path was something far more trivial, far more base, far more ugly, a purely self-serving ego. Yet something far, far more important.

Even if she didn't remember me.

Even if she didn't love me.

"Because she, too, is someone precious to me."

Because losing Ai again was something I absolutely refused to accept.

"… I see."

My great-grandfather murmured, his voice drained of strength.

"Then resist me if you can, foolish dragon!"

He slammed us with genuine killing intent, incomparably greater than anything before.

"Ai! Lend me your strength!"

"… Yes!"

I desperately fought down the urge to flee and clung to my staff with both hands.

"She who breathes frost. She who wears a mantle of white. She of the crimson eyes. She of the gentle heart. Wisest of great lizards, purest and most beautiful of ice dragons."

A technique from long, long ago.

One a boy who'd once ridden on my back had pulled off.

"Lend me your breath. With your might, freeze that which stands before us!"

Ai's magical power flowed into me.

To this day, I still couldn't produce so much as a single droplet of water. The water spirits despised me.

But that was a matter of affinity, entirely unrelated to skill or capacity.

Even in a fire dragon's body, magical power itself had no innate quality.

It was pure force. Flame was merely a product of how that force was shaped upon release.

So long as the one I borrowed from — so long as Ai permitted it — I could channel my own magical power through hers and wield it.

A blizzard erupted from the tip of my staff, burying everything around us in ice and snow.

"Guh… What is—!"

My great-grandfather groaned and tried to produce flames, just as he had when deflecting the arrows. But no matter how vast a fire dragon's reserves, there was a limit to how much power it could output at once. We may have been immature, but we were two dragons working in concert.

Red dragons and white dragons were natural enemies. Fire dragons were vulnerable to cold; ice dragons were vulnerable to heat. But the sheer difference in size meant white dragons could never defeat red ones.

Or so it had always been assumed.

For beings supposedly driven by vengeance over my mother's death, my great-grandfather and the others had been strangely calm and unhurried in their approach.

But what if it wasn't vengeance?

What if their actions were driven by fear of an existence capable of killing them?

I understood that well. The same was true of me. Strength did not make the heart brave.

No, quite the opposite.

Born as the strongest beings in existence, they had never encountered anything that could harm them. Of course they would fear such a thing.

And the fact that they feared it meant—

"We… did it…!"

It meant it could reach them.

Ai cried out in triumph at the sight of my great-grandfather, frozen solid and white.

But I had no such luxury. I sank to my knees, breathing in ragged gasps.

"Are you all right, Mentor?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine…"

Unlike the raw magical power I'd contributed, Ai's had already been shaped into ice. Having that pass through my body… suffice to say, I was anything but fine.

But there was no time to rest. Four fire dragons remained. Yuuki or Rin might have already won their fights, but surely not all of them had finished. I needed to help the others…

Just as I scanned my surroundings, a sharp crack rang out.

"A petty trick."

A muffled voice came from behind me.

"But."

The hiss and sizzle of ice evaporating.

"Did you truly believe… you could win?"

The ice encasing my great-grandfather shattered like glass.

A blue dragon hung limp and unmoving in a fire dragon's claws before being hurled to earth, sending up a towering column of water.

A massive rock formation, riddled with countless holes, crumbled and collapsed.

The vast forest that should have stretched across the landscape had been burned to nothing, black smoke rising from the ashes.

And.

The stone sword Yuuki wielded.

The sword that had been wielded by the Swordsaints for over a thousand years without ever deteriorating, the sword that had slain every foe put before it.

Was smashed to pieces.