“‘Once’?”
“It’s free now. The chains…”
There were chain fragments scattered about the dragon.
“Weare inside that dragon,” said Fienna. “The thing that used to be us, that used to be our king.”
Cain asked, “This is happening right now, in Arland?”
Fienna tilted her head. “Now… It will happen, very soon. But everything feels like ‘now’ to us.”
He didn’t understand. “Why do you look like Fienna?”
“Because it’s the most comfortable for you.” The Fienna who wasn’t Fienna reached out and stroked Cain’s hair. Cain wanted to step back, but somehow, he couldn’t. Her fingers lightly combed through his hair.
“You hardly ask anything. When you’ve come all the way here, looking for answers.”
“I hate things like this,” said Cain.
“What things? Scenes from your homeland?”
His surroundings changed once more. Fienna now stood in the middle of the battlefield from before, the woman in dark red scales fighting right in front of them. Even though the battle seemed to be between a ragtag Arlander army and an Imperial legion in all their battle regalia, the legion seemed to be losing. But the approaching gigatherion had the heavy air of inevitability.
“This is going to happen in the future as well?” Cain asked.
Fienna nodded. “Yes, very soon.”
Cain felt a twitch inside, of the muscle that had been atrophied for so long that he had forgotten that it existed. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he cared for his homeland. These were, however, faraway affairs. This was a battle being fought by Loran and Arienne. Cain gazed at Fienna’s face, a face he knew he would never see again after this, and tried hard to say the thing he needed to say.
“Arland may be my homeland, but it has nothing to do with me now. I want to leave here.”
Fienna’s eyes turned a shade darker.
“It’s not so simple. There’s still one more thing you need to do for us.”
“What’s that?”
Fienna turned toward the battle scene and pointed to where the gigatherion, as large as a castle, was coming from.
“That is gigatherion Clarios, Powered by the Class Two generator Hadiya. Not something Arland’s militia can do anything about. Loran’s fortress will likely fall, and then Kingsworth would be devastated.”
Cain bit his lower lip. “Is there a way to stop it?”
“Not by you. But King Loran is ready to fight to the death.”
Their surroundings once more turned into the cave in the volcano. The fire-dragon with a glowing violet haze in its eyes was roaring at Arienne. Cain almost screamed.
“He was once one of us… Eldred, our former king, is inside the fire-dragon of Arland. Arienne is trying to bring the dragon to the battlefield, fighting alone against the archsorcerer that has possessed the dragon.”
Cain sucked in his breath. “Is there anything I can do to help her?”
Fienna shook her head. “There’s nothing you can do. You are very far away from Arland.”
He bit his lip. “Then why are you showing me these things?”
“Because there is somethingwecan do. We can let Arland fall, or we can force the Twenty-Fifth Legion to retreat. But we can’t do it alone.”
Far above him, the song of the three hundred Power generators reached a new intensity. Cain stared upward.
