~ 46 ~

Dragon of Sorrow

The world stopped with my next footstep.

I noticed it in the air. Felt the sensation inside the morrow of my bone, knowing that I had been watched. Not by the eyes of a human or a monster—but something beyond them. Something celestial. Something... also not of this world.

The gang had been ahead past the border and crossing between beast landing and the assumption of road ahead. Astria and Sebal waved to me as his men carried boxes through the streets of passing horses and carriages.

But my attention was drawn over my shoulder.

The water that should have dripped from across my size didn't strike the ground. Rather it was plucked backward in an invisible force. Narrowing my eyes and curving my tail, I readied myself for whatever might come.

A small and shallow whirlpool formed in the water, rocking the ships, pulling on loose rope left in the water. Everything froze but the whirling water. To my sides, not a creature shifted, the sudden statues unable to blink. Behind me, the forms of my friends paused in the middle of their next step.

What the hell is this?

Tendrils broke from the water, splashing into the air as great, enlarging shapes, with twinkling blue veins sprawling throughout the form. I recognized the creation before its completion. I bared my fangs instinctively, curving my frame to block the friends behind.

The dragon arched over the water, the tendrils breaking from his form, each falling to the water slowly. They collapsed, breaking, unleashing a thick, strange fluid over the port's surface. Freed from its suspensions, the monstrosity fell to the land before me.

And exploded on impact.

I retreated. The strange fluid covered the area, a firm layering over the marble. Blue illuminated across its spread. I lingered, unsure what to expect next. Until I heard... crying. Sobbing, really. Coming from all around me.

My claws and paws stepped back, their heavy thuds carrying through the land still. Whipping my head around, I saw the beasts and the people next to them, motionless, but in tears. Water—or something close—streamed from their eyes. Various lights glittered from within each individual stream.

And the colours, despite appearing the same, each felt unique and somehow different.

“Will you not cry too?”

The ground had bubbled with the words; the streams of tears travelled down their creators, across their faces and chests, down their legs and off their feet. The streams carried across the ground and coalesced into the entity.

I couldn't help but scratch my cheek as I watched. “You'll have to forgive me, but—dry eyes.”

The makeshift pond splashed up into the shape of the dragon again. Once more, it was stretched, but, this time, scales flared across its form, coloured by the hues captured in those swallowed tears. With its head tilted up, the beast unleashed a slow exhale, its eyes devoid of colour.

Just water.

“So the people here still mourn like we do back home.” The dragon raised a claw to his neck, rubbing. Little splashes carried across his scales. “I'd been worried that this world had been different from our own. So many things are different. You and I: we're changed. But misery...”

He then rubbed his eyes. “That is the same no matter where you may go.”

Then held forward his claw. “But I'm curious to know you. The things that you wish to cry about. Offer them to me. Let me know all that haunts your soul.”

I glared at him confusedly while his claw bubbled. His magic spell, however, failed to produce anything. It returned to the ground afterward. “Huh. So nothing in this world has yet brought you to tears. But you feel it too, don't you? That misery that we share?”

I shook my head of all his cryptic bullshit. “Who are you?”

“Val'neer Sul'far.” Val shook his head before my lips could hope to move. “And no. It's not the name that I choose for myself. They were but the words yelled and shouted at me. That's how I came to know of who, and what, I am.”

I looked at the frozen, dried people around me. “Have you stopped time?”

“Not exactly.” Val nodded. “But your lies are safe with me.”

“So you were transported to this world as well.”

“Indeed.”

My heart exploded in whatever the hell that hope feels like. “S-So... do you remember? What came before this, I mean? Who were you? What were you? Do you remember how you got here? Have you—“

“It's hopeless.”

Val was smiling when he said that.

“We're not allowed to carry much more than vague feelings and blurry memories into this life.” Val's smirk turned malicious as he started walking around, testing the space I granted him, looking over and down at the humans. “And it makes sense as well. Why grant us a second life if it is not to be a different life? Whatever exists beyond us would have merely offered an extension instead of sending us to another dimension.”

“Second life?” I couldn't help but repeat to myself as if coming to accept the term, the idea, and that... it somehow applied to me. “You mean that we've been reincarnated? That we had...”

“Had died? Have you not accepted the possibility of your own death yet?” Val curved his tail over the crowd, the liquid vibrating. Tears flicked upward from the eyes of the people. Each glinted with pinpricks of colours. “Be grateful. Many cannot often accept their death after it's happened. It's not like it was true death either. We all die in some way in every year that ticks by.”

He looked at me from over his shoulder. “Even a personality change is death to an older self, an older way of living and being. This is no different from that. Only the change is on a... more drastic scale.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, everything inside of me suddenly tense. Was it possible? Had I really died before being sent here? Part of me thought that some celestial event had occurred. Some magic or witchcraft or something. But had I been someone else before this? Had my current consciousness taken the life of a dragon and a human?

“You're trying to remember him, aren't you, whoever you were before this?” His tail flew back behind him as Val stepped into the middle of the area. He looked around at the gathering of people and beings, the various things that proved irrelevant to his eyes. “Guilt is arising in you. What if your places had been reversed? What if the person before this had taken your life now? You don't want them to be forgotten. Simply taken over. You want to remember them. Give them a chance to come back to life.”

Val shook his head. “Even memories aren't true. Even if you were to perfectly remember who you once were—you could never return to exactly being that person. All we bear is the essence that we were born with. That is shaped by the world and how we choose to live.”

I could only stare at Val with an empty expression.

“Do I have reason to fear you?”

“It's tough being powerless and clueless,” Val commented as he placed his claw on my shoulder, the coldest depth of the sea, inflected in a meagre touch. I recoiled. “It's up to everyone else to set the terms. You have no current ambitions, do you? Nothing to work toward. No object to define your path and how you shall take it.”

Then he looked through me. “But you care for your friends, at the very least.”

I shot my head back at once, seeing the dried statues of my friends, with eyes swollen from crying. Looking down at my claws, I saw their streams pass before I could do anything. They imbued Val's watery claws. Disappearing into the massive form without a hint of being an addition.

Even though whatever they cried about meant more to me than whatever the collection of people here produced.

“Your princess doesn't think of herself as anything special,” Val spoke as though watching a memory, one playing inside his eyes. “Neglected by family and friends. Self-trained in everything, but never affirmed if she turned out to be any good. Not much use in reading a book unless you're tested to see how well you know it. She feels unloved and unworthy of love. Those who should love her, don't. And those that do—only awful things happen to.”

His lips pushed to the side. “It's her fear that nothing will ever come to be. That she'll be broken by this world and proven worthless and useless after all. She'll try really hard to prove herself otherwise—but in her heart of hearts, she doesn't have a sliver of faith in herself.”

He nodded. “Hard to... when you've never been tested or commented upon.”

Then Val licked his lips. “And Sebal. Decent fellow. Cries easily for the things that one ought to. But the cause of his deepest tears, the ones created by his greatest pain... oh, betrayal. By loved and trusted ones. Oh? Oh...”

Val hummed. “Leads a crew but is never a part of one. Lives his best and exhibits a rarely-shared honour. Never keeps part of a group in fear of repeats. This creates a new reason for tears. Oh, how humans hurt each other so easily, by the little things we say and the inconsequential things we do.”

I glared at Val. “What is it you want?”

Val flashed genuine surprise.

“My irritating words haven't yet set hatred in your heart?” Val asked. “Very well. To be put simply, it must. My wish of this world—rather, my wish of you? For you to kill me, dear Emerald Dragon.”