Chapter 53
“I had a dream about the past...”
I murmured vaguely, and Fia laughed as if she found it amusing.
“Come on, Zabiria. What past could you have at zero years old?”
She kept giggling, and I found myself laughing, too.
Whenever I’m with Fia, it’s always fun. It’s fun, warm, and reassuring.
That was why remembering a past so utterly different... the long time I spent all alone... made me realize all over again just how worthless it had been.
Hey, Fia. The two thousand years before I met you were completely worthless...
◇◇◇
―――When I was born, I was a one-winged Blue Dragon with no name.
Dragons lay eggs.
And I, too, was born from an egg.
What made my circumstances unusual was that it was a double-yolked egg――in other words, a pair of twins.
Humans apparently can be born healthy even as twins, but that isn’t so for creatures that hatch from eggs.
That’s because the size of an egg is fixed, and so is the amount of nutrients inside it.
And no one expects there to be twins.
In other words, there weren’t enough nutrients in the egg for two.
So I thought inside the egg.
How could I grow enough with only half the nutrients?
The answer came easily: I just had to grow small.
I carefully adjusted my body’s size and kept it smaller than normal.
That way, even with fewer nutrients, I managed to grow enough to hatch.
The unfortunate one was my older twin brother.
He kept growing without thinking, and became as large as an ordinary hatchling.
If he had to share nutrients with me, he would never grow enough to hatch.
So my brother ate one of my wings so he could grow big enough to hatch.
...I remember the morning I was born.
It was a spring day of violent thunderstorms, as if the heavens were blessing us.
The moment I hatched, Mother Dragon was beside the egg.
As she carefully removed the shell fragments clinging to my older brother’s head and body, Mother Dragon gave him a name along with words of blessing.
A name is power. When my brother was given a name of his own, he received a share of Mother’s power.
At the moment he was named, my brother’s body shone from within and grew about two sizes larger. His pale yellow body turned a vivid blue, too.
I gazed at him enviously, spread my single wing, and pressed my body flat against the ground from head to tail as I waited for my turn.
Not knowing that it was something I would never be given.
Mother Dragon glanced at my single wing and paid me no further attention.
Then she left me alone in the cave and went away with my brother.
Shell fragments clung to my head and body, the base of my torn-off wing throbbed with pain, and my malnourished body cried out with hunger. Even so, I held that same pose.
Somehow, I felt Mother Dragon would come back, remove the shell from my head, and give me a name.
I waited one day, then two, then three.
All that time, the rain kept falling, and I didn’t move at all. I just listened to the sound of the rain.
That experience must have stayed with me as a vivid memory.
Dragons instinctively like rain, but I still hate it. Whenever I hear the sound of rain, it feels as if insects are crawling around inside me.
Even so, despite that horrible, sickening sensation, I left the cave and stepped out into the rain I hated.
The spring wind made the rain warm as it poured over my whole body.
But I had to keep walking through that unpleasant, sickening rain.
You know your own limits.
If I went one more day without eating, I would probably die.
And Mother Dragon surely wouldn’t come back.
At last, I understood.
The chances of an injured dragon hatchling surviving were low. Mother Dragon had another child, my older brother.
Mother Dragon had chosen to avoid the risk of raising me, a hatchling who might never grow into an adult dragon.
Because raising just my brother would be more efficient.
So I had to survive on my own.
In this one-winged body that had been deemed too difficult to save even with Mother’s help.
In this tiny body that had never been given a name or power.
What must I have looked like then?
There was no such thing as a nameless dragon, so there were no dragon hatchlings as small and pale as me.
Such a small, hazy creature, with an unbalanced body and only one wing, was toddling along.
I couldn’t fly. The most I could do was walk awkwardly, off-balance.
It was fortunate I didn’t look like a dragon. Or perhaps it was because Mother Dragon had never given me a name.
Names came with power and memories. If I had the memories of a dragon, I would have been compelled to act with a dragon’s pride.
Or if I had looked like a dragon, other monsters would have forced me to act like one.
But neither was true, so I did whatever I could, consumed by the desire to survive.
I drank muddy water and scavenged the corpses other monsters had picked clean. I couldn’t taste anything.
All that mattered was getting enough nourishment to make it through the day.
And I survived for a year.
I could no longer be called a hatchling. I had grown large enough to overpower mid- and low-level monsters.
I still had only one wing, and I had never flown.
Another year passed, and I reached a nesting ground for Blue Dragons.
I had been aiming for this place all along.
It had taken me two years to get there, but considering I hadn’t even known its exact location, that wasn’t bad.
It was deep in a forest filled with many dim caves, the kind dragons favored.
When the young dragon on guard spotted me, it let out a threatening cry.
But after confirming that my body was faintly blue, the cry changed to one welcoming a fellow dragon.
Dragons form groups by species. Young strays like me are usually welcomed into a group unless there’s some serious problem.
That group was made up of about ten Blue Dragons. Its leader was a particularly large dragon with a scar above the right eye. Unfortunately, neither Mother Dragon nor my brother was among them.
But having lived my whole life without seeing either of them, I no longer cared about those two. All I wanted then was to live with others of my kind.
Dragons generally live in groups. Our kind is made to feel safe and comfortable living alongside its fellows.
I spent ten years there.
My body was clearly paler than the others’, and I had only one wing, so my fellow dragons sometimes bullied and looked down on me. But it never became a serious problem. Compared to the reassurance of having a place to sleep, food guaranteed, and others by my side, those things were trivial.
Dragons live in a hierarchical society, with rankings among the males.
I was at the very bottom, but I had no complaints about it.
Since I was the lowest-ranking one, I was sent out on every hunt. That gave me plenty of chances to fight, and I grew stronger and stronger as a result.
I think that after ten years, I had become the strongest after the leader.
The others seemed to have some sense of how strong I was, and whenever they found themselves in trouble during a fight, they always called for me.
Each time, I felt so happy both because my fellows relied on me and because I was able to help them.
So I never cared about the hierarchy, and I had no intention of challenging any of the other male dragons to a fight for a higher rank.
Our nesting ground had remained peaceful like that, but one night, a pack of Fenrirs attacked us.
Fenrirs are gray wolf monsters, a powerful upper-tier species among monsters.
The troublesome thing about them is that they act in packs.
Their packs should have no more than about ten members, but that night there were over twenty. They must have been led by an exceptionally powerful leader.
We were caught by surprise while sleeping, and were at a disadvantage.
We were sleeping separately, one or two to a group, and the Fenrirs surrounded and attacked us in numbers several times our own.
Our leader decided on the spot to abandon the nesting ground.
He opened his mouth toward the sky and let out a roar signaling his decision. The Blue Dragons who heard it took to the sky one after another.
The only ones left on the ground were me, unable to fly; the leader, still roaring; and one Blue Dragon who had been attacked by the Fenrirs and had missed the chance to take off.
Had the leader underestimated how coordinated the Fenrirs’ attacks were?
He should have flown up first, then roared to give the signal.
Several Fenrirs leaped at the leader as he continued roaring. Then several more. And then more still.
By the time I realized what was happening, Fenrirs covered his entire body, and the next moment, the leader was dragged to the ground.
I rushed to the leader’s side and pulled the Fenrirs clinging to him away.
I had grown strong over those ten years.
Having only one wing was an overwhelming disadvantage.
To make up for it, I had honed my claws until they were sharper than any other dragon’s and could easily tear open an enemy’s throat. My fangs were sharp, too; I could probably crush a Fenrir’s whole arm or leg in my jaws.
But there were far too many enemies.
By the time I pulled the last Fenrir away from the leader—or rather, by the time the Fenrir left him, thinking it had delivered the finishing blow—the leader was barely breathing.
Anyone could see it. He didn’t have much longer.
I peered into the leader’s face, trying to catch his final words.
―――At that moment.
The leader gave me words of blessing.
In the twelve years since I was born into this world, it was the first time I had ever been blessed.
Warmth filled my body, and at the same time, light began to shine from within me.
Realizing he was near death, the leader passed his name and all his power on to me.
―――And perhaps it was only possible because I had no name.
The leader, nearing death, and I, nameless. This rare coincidence came together, and I inherited the leader’s name.
Zabiria. That became my name.