Chapter 201: Only a Dragon [BONUS]

Encrid did not answer the question.

Not because he did not want to.

Because he was thinking.

He thought the way he always thought, when something frightened him. He took the fear and set it to one side, and he looked at the thing that frightened him as if it were a line in a ledger that did not add up.

The Grand Magus was one of the Eight Stars of Astralis.

In the novel, the Eight Stars had been the strongest beings in the world. The heroes of the age. The names that the entire story had been built around. Encrid had read fifteen volumes about them.

And something in the horde had put its hand on one of their barriers, casually, and could have torn it apart.

What could do that?

Not a Roamer.

Encrid had appraised hundreds of Roamers in the last few days. Even the Elder, the most powerful Roamer anyone on the Wall had ever seen, had needed to push with its whole weight to crack the barrier.

And it must definitely not be human.

There was no Sovereign or Transcendent walking around in a horde of Roamers.

Not a Sin.

Encrid stopped on that thought.

The Sin of Pride.

He had been thinking about it since the night of the bloodlust. A pale, man-shaped figure that bent the light around it. The strongest of the Seven Sins. Connected to the fall of the Wall.

It was possible.

But the Sins of the novel were strong in a particular way. They were strong like the Eight Stars were strong. They could fight a Grand Magus. They could beat one, perhaps.

They could not touch one of his barriers and treat it like wet paper.

In fifteen volumes, Encrid had read about only one kind of creature that could do that. Only one kind of creature that the novel had ever described as being above magic.

Not stronger than it but above it.

The kind of creatures that had existed since the deep-folk raised the Darwen Span.

The Kalaeris had called it an Ancient.

"A Dragon," Encrid said.

The word hung in the air on top of the rise.

Zuri turned to stare at him. Gareth’s hand tightened on his sword hilt. Ysolde did not move at all.

The Grand Magus looked at Encrid for a long moment.

Then he nodded.

"I think so too," he said quietly.

"That’s not possible," Gareth said. "There haven’t been any sightings of dragons in the Empire for three hundred years. They’re gone. They’re stories."

"They’re not gone," the Grand Magus said. "They’re asleep, most of them. Or far away. Or hiding. They don’t care about us, you see. We’re too small to care about." He looked north again. "Most of them."

"How do you know it’s a dragon?" Zuri asked.

"Because nothing else touches my magic like that." The old man’s voice was flat. "I’ve fought Elders. I’ve fought Sovereigns. I fought a Sin once, a long time ago, and I’m still here, so I suppose I won." He shook his head. "Every one of them had to break my magic, push against it or tear it."

He paused.

"That thing didn’t push. It just put its hand on it. And my magic listened to it. Like a dog listening to its master."

No one said anything.

"Dragons are older than magic," the Grand Magus said. "That’s what the old books say. Magic was made from what they left behind. So magic remembers them."

? ? ?

Encrid stood on the rise and looked north at the horde.

He thought about the status windows.

Every Roamer he had appraised has shown one word - Compelled. Even the Elder itself, blind and wounded, was walking straight toward the barrier as if something was guiding its steps.

Compelled.

He thought about the bloodlust. The pressure that had come down on the Wall like a hundred thousand swords. The feeling of being looked down by something wide awake.

Something that felt insulted.

Something proud.

And then he thought about something else.

"If it’s a Dragon," he said slowly, "then why did it need the horde?"

The Grand Magus turned to look at him.

"Say that again."

"A Dragon that can touch your barrier like that," Encrid said. "A Dragon that can make an Elder walk blind across thirty miles. It could have flattened the Wall by itself. It didn’t need forty thousand Roamers. It didn’t need an Elder. It didn’t need anyone to open a gate."

He looked at the old man.

"So why did it gather an army?"

For the first time, the Grand Magus did not have an answer.

He looked north for a long time.

"I don’t know," he said at last.

Encrid did not know either.

He stood on the rise and turned the question over and over in his head, and every answer he came up with was worse than the last.

Maybe the Dragon had wanted something from the Wall. Something the horde was meant to carry away.

Maybe it was not strong enough yet to do it alone. Maybe it was young.

Or maybe it had never been trying to destroy the Wall at all.

Encrid did not know where that last thought came from. It came into his head and sat there, cold and heavy, and he could not make it go away.

He thought about Wilm Trask, dying on the floor of the winch room.

A traitor who had waited twenty-three years. A gate opened at exactly the right time. A horde that had gathered in a basin for months. An Elder woken and sent walking. A Dragon hidden in the middle of it all, watching.

It was not a horde.

It was a plan.

And Encrid was standing in the middle of it without the faintest idea of who had made it.

"Brother."

Zuri’s hand was on his arm.

"Brother, look."

Encrid looked where she was pointing.

The crack in the barrier had spread. It ran from the Elder’s forehead up to the very top of the dome now, a jagged dark line through the gold.

And it was still growing.

? ? ?

Thank you @Stingdragon for the Magic castle~