Chapter 1054 — The Stars Over Tarrond

"Building more shelters, and opening fishing grounds along the coast," Metzen said. "And while I think about it, I keep thinking of humans... the humans I was responsible for contacting on the Loren Continent."

"Cecil?" Noreta raised her eyebrows. "Well, yes — our present situation does make it easy to think of them back then. Rebuilding everything from the same ruins, the same plight of refugees... Though Tarrond today is far more hostile than the Dark Mountains, and the survival challenges we face far exceed those of those humans."

"And correspondingly, we are far more powerful than those humans, are we not?" Metzen looked at her friend. "We have lost our implants, lost our boosters, lost the factories and the whole social system... but with fang and claw alone, dragons are still formidable creatures."

At these words, Noreta suddenly fell silent, and only after a moment did she speak, her tone seemingly very complicated. "Yes — with fang and claw alone, dragons are still formidable... That is why, before we found you, Karadore and Elder Dukmor and I discussed exactly this. Do you know what my worst association was?"

"Your worst association?" Metzen asked with some curiosity. "What was it?"

"Do you remember those stories?" Noreta looked toward the camp, her gaze falling on the dragons using salvaged scrap to repair equipment and dragonfire to melt steel and weld the barrier walls. "Those old-fashioned hero tales, those poems called the 'classical dark-side corpus.'"

"...Dragons running amok in the human world, seizing castles and towers, plundering treasure, abducting princesses and princes, receiving tribute from kings... that sort of thing?" Images surfaced in Metzen's mind, and as she realized what Noreta meant, her expression turned strange. "Aren't you overthinking it?"

"It seems I was overthinking — the first thing everyone thought of after awakening in this wasteland was rebuilding their homeland and rescuing their kin. But whenever things grow quiet, I still cannot help letting my thoughts run wild," Noreta said with a self-mocking smile and a shake of her head. "This wasteland is so vast, and many survivors are cut off by the ruins across the wide land, and they... perhaps they do not have the hope we have here. When they grow hungry enough, when they realize the temple institutions and the council that once approved exit permits no longer exist... how long do you think it will be before they think of the warmer human world, with food far more plentiful than here? And there is no radiation there, no cold wind, no wandering elementals."

Metzen truly had never considered such a thing, and after hearing Noreta's words, she was stunned for a moment before quickly falling silent. She remained silent for a full half minute before suddenly saying, "...We cannot degenerate into beasts — we are a civilized and rational people, how could we..."

"Our civilization is already gone, and 'decency' and 'pride' will in the end give way to reality — even if we are dragons," Noreta said, word by word. "Of course, most of us will choose to face this wasteland proudly, but perhaps a few... even a very, very few, perhaps they will choose the base path."

"...What would await them would not be the swords and bows of adventurers, but more likely the arcane missile anti-air cannons of Cecil's northern frontier and the laser arrays of the Typhonians," Metzen said with a shake of her head. "Those old tales are just tales, and humans are not as weak and easily bullied as in the stories. They may once have been far weaker than Tarrond, but today... perhaps not."

"But it cannot be denied that dragons driven to despair after losing the bonds of society remain a very great danger. Our innate power is too strong, while the starting point of most mortals in this age of civilization is too weak," Noreta sighed. "That is why we must find a way — we cannot let a proud people sink into such a dark, despicable state, and the most urgent thing we can do now is to bring some hope to the other survivors who may exist in the wild."

"Bring a little hope?" Metzen repeated instinctively.

"That idea you proposed really is excellent," Noreta suddenly smiled in the dim, dusk-like light. "Perhaps even you do not realize how excellent it is."

"My idea?" Metzen was taken aback for a moment before reacting. "Oh, you mean lighting the flame? It was really just a sudden inspiration... After all, I did spend so long active in the human world."

Noreta kept smiling and glanced back toward the tallest ruined watchtower in the southwest corner of the camp. "Lord Bayangol is about to light the flame — they say he repaired a pressure-boosting device dug out of the ruins, and the blaze it spews will be enough to cross the entire plain..."

Metzen instinctively looked that way as well. In the dim light, with the most primitive, natural vision, untouched by any filter or visual enhancement system, she saw the tall tower; on the platform at its top, vague shadows were moving, and a point of firelight flickered now and then.

She blinked, wanting to see more clearly — and in that very instant, a blaze that shot into the sky, accompanied by a roar of pressure, suddenly tore apart the gloomy dusk!

A colossal pillar of flame rose up, piercing the murky, dim sky above the ruins of Agondor as if it would run through heaven and earth; its brilliant light, just as Noreta had said, could be seen across the entire plain.

Many dragons in the camp were startled by the blaze and raised their heads to look toward the watchtower; even those dragons already somewhat delirious from the backlash of the boosters were, for a moment, drawn to it.

In Metzzen's violet eyes the leaping flames of the camp were reflected, and she was somewhat startled; several seconds passed before she looked away.

She gazed beyond the camp, her eyes sweeping across the dim plain shrouded under filthy clouds.

The rolling, scorched earth, the savagely torn ruins of the city, the molten, twisted wreckage of steel — all of it lay wrapped in a still and shadowy gloom.

The fire rising from the ruined camp of Agondor was, in all that vastness, the only light in the world.

Metzzen stood on the high platform gazing into the distance, and for a long while she found nothing at all; at last she sighed with disappointment, and at her side Noreta said softly, "Perhaps they haven't seen it yet — or perhaps they did send up a signal, but we couldn't—"

A faint point of fire suddenly appeared in Metzzen's and Noreta's sight. It rose from the very edge of the horizon, lasted only a brief moment before dissolving into the sky, but a few seconds later another flame of the same kind climbed up in the same place.

The rest of Noreta's words died unspoken; she and Metzzen both stared wide-eyed, and within mere seconds new light appeared in their view — light from another direction, a bolt of lightning, unmistakably lightning wrought by magic.

Then came a third signal, and a fourth.

Now a faint breath of dragonfire, now a bright flash of lightning, now merely a sudden plume of dust thrown up from the ruins — as though answering the flames of Agondor one after another, they rose from every corner of the barren, scorched plain, great and small, far and near.

The nearest of them was close by the camp itself.

Metzzen's eyes went very wide—

Beneath the dim and heavy sky, these faint lights shone bright as a field of stars.