The Reason She's an Evil Dragon
Her hair had been combed as fine and smooth as silk threads, and in the airy dress she looked every inch a young lady. She had always been beautiful enough, yet properly dressed she shone like the princess of a distinguished house.
“Your handiwork?”
“Hehe, yes. She wouldn’t answer no matter how I called, just sat there like a doll… I got bored, so I fussed over her a little. Is it all right?”
Echidna twisted her body, looking bashful.
Ferda recalled the golems she had once built—eyes far too large and sparkling, heads far too small, like a child’s drawing of a little girl.
Is it because she’s a woman herself that her aesthetic sense for girls hasn’t twisted?
It had been a pointless exercise, yet it was not a bad one.
Rather good, in fact.
Even if she was a tool, Mori was unmistakably a living being, and living beings required far more delicate care than tools. Since she could not look after herself, someone had to do it for her. That was only natural.
“If you have the free time, would you look after Mori for me?”
Echidna’s eyes sparkled; she nodded so hard her head nearly came off.
“Of course! I-it’s so wonderful to touch such a pretty child with my own hands, ehe, ehehe…!”
“I would prefer you didn’t do anything strange. She’s an essential talent.”
“Ah, I-I wouldn’t do anything like that. I’m not some wicked witch who eats children or young men, you know? I’ll cherish her, comb her hair, feed her—things like that!”
The way she spoke was so ominous that everything she said sounded wrong.
Still wearing that gloomy smile, Echidna absently brought Mori’s hair to her own nose and inhaled the scent.
Definitely strange.
Ferda decided not to doubt his own judgment.
Mori simply looked up at him, indifferent to everything else. It was the face of someone waiting only for the next command.
“That’s all for today. Return to your room and rest well for tomorrow.”
Mori nodded, rose from her seat, and began to walk away.
That was when it happened.
Kuuung—!
The castle shuddered once, hard. Mori, mid-step, lost her footing and tumbled straight to the floor.
“Oh dear! Mori!”
Echidna scrambled over and helped her up.
Ferda held his breath, waiting to see whether a second impact would come.
Fortunately, none did.
Echidna’s flustered voice broke the silence.
“W-what was that? Does this sort of thing happen often here?”
“First time.”
The castle sometimes trembled, but never in the middle of the night like this.
And never this violently, either.
As regent, Ferda needed to find out what was going on.
“Echidna.”
“Yes?”
“Put Mori to bed in her room. That child is needed tomorrow. And you, return quietly as well. Understood?”
“Y-yes, sir!”
Echidna scooped Mori into her arms and left.
Once she was gone, Ferda stepped out into the corridor and began to walk.
The sound almost certainly came from the lair.
He decided to go down and see for himself.
After walking for some time he saw a soft light glowing in the middle of the corridor.
It was Ruri, holding a lantern.
“You’ve taken the wrong direction.”
With a calm, expressionless face she pointed back the way he had come.
“The bedchamber is on the opposite side.”
She pretended it was simple guidance, but Ferda saw through her.
“You’re hiding something from me.”
“Yes.”
She did not deny it.
“So would you please return to your room?”
“That won’t do. As the one who will become master of this castle, I need to know about this.”
“You are not the master of this castle.”
“I am the one who soon will be.”
Silver eyes and blue eyes refused to release each other. Neither yielded an inch.
It was Ruri who finally stepped back from the standoff.
“My master is currently suppressing her own bloodlust.”
“How?”
“There is no need to worry. That single tremor just now is rare. It does not normally happen. The rest of us can go about our work, so—”
Ferda closed the distance until he stood right in front of her.
His eyes twisted savagely.
“How?”
Irritation and anger were plain in his voice—emotions he had never once shown even when Ruri had been rude before.
Ruri’s brow furrowed.
“How else? What does one do to hold back the urge to destroy?”
“……”
“My master is fighting the desire to smash through that great iron door and turn the world upside down. That craving—to crush everything—piles up inside her heart every single day without fail. Because that is her essence.”
An evil dragon remained an evil dragon forever.
The reason she could never bear the name of guardian dragon was partly the result of slander, but in the end it was because she could not endure the impulse to destroy.
“My master lived by killing monsters and thereby answering that destructive urge. If those monsters no longer appear… what do you think she does?”
Ferda recalled the memories of Baldrova that were carved into his heart.
The answer left his own lips.
“……She destroys herself?”
“Yes. When there is nothing left to destroy, that is what she does.”
Ruri had watched over her for so long that she knew it well. And it was a natural disaster even the most loyal servant could do nothing about.
“The one you are engaged to is exactly that sort of person. She cannot control herself and has already wounded many.”
And so Ruri delivered her warning to this young, foolishly stubborn Ferda.
“That is why I hope you will not keep saying you wish to see her. If your selfish feelings will only wound my master—”
Please stop.
Ruri, mid-rebuke, could not finish the sentence.
Looking up at him, her eyes went wide.
Something utterly unfitting was falling from Ferda’s face.
Tears…?
From the eyes of that shameless human, Ferda, tears were sliding down.
Just one drop.
It fell from an expression that had not changed at all, yet Ruri was shocked.
There was no doubt the tears had come because of the story she had just told.
Feeling the wet trail on his cheek, Ferda realized it a moment late.
“Ah.”
He, too, was startled by his own state. He wiped the tear away with a fingertip and apologized to her.
“I’ve shown you something unsightly.”
Unlike his eyes, his voice held no moisture. It was as though the tear ducts had shriveled and forced out the last of the water that had pooled there.
“I understand. I understand what you’re saying.”
Ferda abandoned the investigation and turned back toward his own room.
“Sorry for the trouble. I’ll go.”
Ruri watched him walk away in silence.
Only when his figure had nearly faded did she finally manage to speak.
“What an incomprehensible human……”
Ruri had lived long enough to watch many humans and had thought she understood them well.
Yet the more she learned about Ferda, the less she understood him.
A man who would snap even an ally’s fingers in the name of fairness, who would kill a nobleman because trouble might follow.
A man without blood or tears… had wept.
Just from hearing a story about my master… can someone feel that deeply?
They had not even known of each other’s existence for a full year.
How could such profound emotion be possible?
No matter how many times Ruri turned the question over, no answer appeared.
“Tears, is it……”
Ferda himself was astonished by the fact.
That he could still cry.
Those tears had not been born of his own emotions.
They seeped in while we were talking.
The moment he understood that the great tremor was Baldrova,
and the moment he learned she had been harming herself—
Baldrova’s feelings had soaked into him.
Self-loathing.
Whenever she could not control herself she fed that self-hatred. She flung herself into the unclean things she had buried deep in the pit of her emotions. She listened to the cursed voices that echoed in the abyss and strangled her own throat until she choked. Crushed under that self-loathing, she forced the destructive urge down.
She wanted to exist, and at the same time she did not want to exist.
Every day she fought that battle alone.
That indescribable feeling now seethed beneath Ferda’s dantian.
The Red Circle is turning.
It was still short of the next stage. If he concentrated and stayed awake for several days straight he could certainly reach the third circle—a dangerous path, yet one that would bring extremely rapid progress.
No.
Ferda put the brakes on the spinning Red Circle.
Not this time.
He remembered the emotion that had accompanied his breakthrough to the second circle. That something which had tickled him had vanished the moment he achieved it.
This… I must not forget.
In this life he had decided to live for her. The vow he had made then was that even if he could not make her happy, he would never make her sad.
This feeling was bound directly to her sorrow.
He did not want to gloss over her grief by turning it into a mere achievement.
I’ll resolve that first.
Moving forward could come after.
That was why he stood here now.
The next morning Ferda went to the study where Mori was waiting.
She had already been dressed up by Echidna’s hands.
Ferda asked her,
“Do you know much about dragons?”
What rested inside her mind was the Library of All Things—every record and piece of knowledge on the continent had been inscribed there. Naturally she nodded.
“About the red dragon Baldrova as well?”
Nod, nod.
“Can you describe it for me?”
Mori nodded again, took up a pen, and began to write. Instead of the flowing cursive used by ordinary scribes she wrote in clear, easy-to-read print.
The existence of dragons is that of those who fought to turn the chaos of the primordial age into order. What the survivors were granted is the very essence that forms the continent. To the blue dragon Morgan was given dominion over mana and water; to the silver dragon Silverwind, the power to command wind and ice.
It was a page from the continental history books he had studied as a child in his cultural lessons.
What the red dragon was granted is strength and fire. Her personal martial might is the greatest among all dragons.
“Is that why there is so much slander calling her a tyrant or a demon dragon?”
She has consistently been described as an object of awe; however, her formal designation as an evil dragon is relatively recent in dragon history.
“Since when?”
After the Dragon-Demon War—that is, after the death of Godwin.
The black dragon, lord of darkness.
The day the first dragon of the continent died.
The black dragon Godwin was known as the dragon who ruled darkness, yet it was later learned that ambition—chaos itself—had also been granted to him as his essence. Godwin revealed that ambition, becoming the source of all evil and plunging the continent into turmoil. In the end the other sovereigns rose against him, and he died by the hand of the red dragon Baldrova.
“And so?”
The most widely accepted hypothesis is that, in the process of killing him, Godwin’s power rendered Baldrova’s own power unstable. Consequently the Aspect of Strength could no longer fully suppress her might, giving rise to secondary disasters.
Baldrova’s rampage.
The appearance of the Demon King had killed many, yet her rampage had also slaughtered and burned countless others.
Innocent humans and living creatures… and even Silverwind.
A tragedy for which she would have to atone for eternity.
“Is there no way to suppress it?”
Mori closed her eyes. She was rifling through every book stored inside her mind. After five minutes of meditation she opened them again.
She shook her head from side to side.
“Is that so?”
Ferda accepted it calmly. The very idea had been a contradiction from the start. If there existed a method to suppress the red dragon called the Aspect of Strength, could she still be called that Aspect?
She would have to suffer under her own power forever.
Is there truly nothing I can do for her?
Ferda suffered. The image of her peeling off her own scales and bleeding rose before him. Helplessness pressed down like a thousand-catty weight; emptiness pierced his heart like a thousand spears. It was a pain similar to what he had felt when he absorbed her heart.
If only I could do anything at all for her…
That was when a small touch brushed the hem of his clothes.
Mori, still holding the pen, had tugged at his sleeve.
A tool did not move without reason. The fact that she had moved meant one of the commands he had given was activating.
“Has a situation arisen in which you can give me an answer?”
Mori nodded. She moved the pen again.
Based on the information provided, I have confirmed a hypothesis by which suppression is possible.
The moment he read the next sentence she wrote, the thick fog inside Ferda’s heart cleared and the sun rose.
Mori’s eyes looked at him with perfect clarity.
According to the hypothesis, Ferda Valdrova—you are capable of suppressing her.
On a late night when the moon shone brightly, Ferda walked a corridor lit only by candlelight.
What a busy day it has been.
Decades of neglect had left mountains of official business; clearing the backlog was no easy task.
Still, with Mori here it is progressing smoothly.
Her processing speed already far surpassed that of any human. At this pace everything could be finished within a year.
My role is to assist so that she need not trouble herself over anything.
Holding that thought, Ferda devoted himself wholly to his duty.
Before heading to the bedchamber he turned toward the study. If his prediction was correct, Mori would be waiting there.
By now she should be standing by; I need to order her to return.
A child who could not even breathe without permission. He never forgot to command her to go back to her own room.
When he entered the study he found someone he had not expected at all.
“Hello! Lord Ferda!”
The gloomy witch Echidna greeted him with an awkward smile.
“Address me as Regent.”
“Ah! I will. And you must call me Echidna, all right? Promise?”
“I will.”
“Ehehehe……”
An awkward, sinister little smile. Ferda noted it and walked past her toward Mori.
Just as he had expected, she was waiting there quietly.
“?”
She looked quite different from when he had seen her that morning.