Lucia Meets the Baby Dragon

When I opened my eyes, there was something white that was so close, I couldn’t make it out properly.

“What!?”

“Kyuwah!”

As I shot upright, that “something” fell onto my lap. It was — a dragon.

Though it was still just a tiny infant, it had proper wings attached to its pearly scaled body. Its toes had adorable, but sharp, crystal-like claws. On its head were similarly crystal-like horns, and there was a clear, elegantly draping fin running down its tail. As it wagged side to side happily, light reflected and scattered around it. The small dragon’s puffy tummy was pointed this way as its golden sun-like eyes opened wide. It was just like a baby, ignorant of the world.

“Kyu?” The baby dragon cooed, snuggling up to me.

Huh? What’s happening here?

“Lucia!”

“Yes!?” As I stared at the baby dragon in shock, someone slammed into me from the side. It was Miss Maria.

“I’m sorry!” she sobbed. “I’m so, so sorry!”

Miss Maria clung to me, squeezing her arms around my throat. T-This is kind of bad...!

“Sacred Maiden, please let go of her. She can’t breathe,” Sir Celes said, throwing me a lifeline.

“Eh? Ah, sorry!”

Once I could finally breathe again, I tried to piece together what happened. It looked like I had passed out and been brought inside of a tent. I was lying on a cushion with a blanket over me; on my lap was a baby white dragon; to my sides were Miss Maria and Sir Celes; and Eric was nearby, too.

“Um... I...”

What happened to the Cristallo Sacro? Where did this baby dragon come from? I wondered.

“Thank you, Lucia,” Sir Celes said. “It’s thanks to you that the Cristallo Sacro of Kyriest was purified.”

He stood up and opened the entrance to the tent, showing me the outside. Through the gap, I could see the Cristallo Sacro shining like an opal against the light purple dusk sky. I gasped at the magical sight. It looked nothing like it did before it was purified.

“After you used all of your mana to purify the tree, you fainted, and this dragon was born from its fruit, like it was an egg. We tried to pull it off of you, but it wouldn’t let go. We had to leave it...”

Sir Celes sighed, and Eric reached out to try to grab the baby dragon. But it clung to my leg, not budging an inch.

“See, just like that,” Eric whined. “And it’s not like we could attack it while it was on you.”

“I told you before!” Miss Maria quickly shot back. “It doesn’t look like a bad monster, so you should just leave it!”

“It’s a dragon! We have no idea when it’ll start attacking us!”

“How could you kill something this cute, you monster! You can’t be human!”

After Miss Maria was kidnapped, Eric had apologized for how he had treated her. Now they were close enough to argue like this... It was probably just my imagination that they did the same thing before.

“The only reason you can say that is because you don’t know how much damage the last dragon did!” Eric yelled.

Unable to back down, Miss Maria countered. “I can say it because I don’t know! Look at it! It’s not hostile at all! It likes us! It’d be wrong to kill something this cute! And it regenerated Lucia’s mana, didn’t it!? That’s a good thing!”

After she said that, it finally dawned on me; Miss Maria was right, I felt completely different than I did after fainting in Arldat. I wasn’t freezing, and I could move normally. It was like I had drunk one of those mana restoratives, but... Was this the little dragon’s doing?

“Did you restore my mana?” I asked looking down at my leg.

“Kyui!” The baby dragon squealed proudly, as if it understood what I’d said.

“Thank you. You saved me.”

“Lucia, let me measure your levels again.” Eric handed me the scale. As I put it in my mouth, the blue line shot right up. “It looks like you’re back to full. How, though? I’ve never heard of dragons being able to do something like that.”

Eric glared at the device, grumbling at all the new unknown information.

“This is bad. This is so bad! I want to experiment on it so much, but I haven’t got any supplies here to work with! Ahh, but we don’t know when it’ll start attacking, either...”

“Can’t we just have Lucia use Soap on it every once in a while? And how could you do something as cruel as experiment on something so cute. Eri-kun, you research dummy!”

“Hmm... That might actually work. It’s something to think about.”

While I watched on as Eric ignored Miss Maria’s attack, Sir Celes, on my other side, spoke to me, “Ignoring all that, how are you feeling, Lucia? Does anything feel weird?”

You could see in his blue sky-like eyes that he was worried about me. It made my chest hurt.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re really okay?”

“Yes, I’m alright. Just look!” I lifted the baby dragon, who was still clinging to me, into my arms and stood up. “See? I’m not dizzy at all!”

“Kyukyu!”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did that hurt?”

“Kyuiiiii!”

I must have squeezed it a bit too tightly when I stood, because it squeaked in protest. Its golden eyes peering at me were like jewels. Oh no, it’s so cute...! There’s no way we can hurt this little baby, right? I understood why they’d want to get rid of it now before it grew into an awful adult dragon, but I couldn’t stand to hurt it after looking into its eyes!

“I see... That’s great,” Sir Celes said with a sigh. Relieved by my cheerfulness, he went back to his usual gentle smile. Unlike him, I haven’t been able to handle that smile like I used to ever since I started this journey.

Oh, calm down, heart!