“Goss, where are we going? Please, I really think we should talk about—”

“I told you—I have to show you something.” He flaps his wings harder, the tunnel around us becoming a blur of dark rocks and indiscernible shapes flashing by. My ribs healed a few minutes back, but I still feel like my chest is cracked and shattered. High above, Goss pants with exertion, flying faster and stronger, probably trying to drown out his thoughts at any cost. Being the softie I am, I don’t stop him.

He flies and he flies and within mere minutes the glittering end of the tunnel winks ahead of us and we burst out into the cool, comforting night air outside. The night sky yawns open above our heads, teeth of glistening stars dangling above our heads as the multiple moons gaze down, watching us as we streak up, up and above.

Goss’ grip on me tightens as he brings us into the sky, wings beating powerfully to take the world below us further away, until the trees become like flayed toothpicks and the cliffsides mere pebbles in our eyes. The air grows colder around us, puffs of pale, smoky air huffily escaping Goss’ open mouth, barely able to dissipate before the flapping of his wings causes them to spiral into tiny tornadoes of smoke.

The clouds grow nearer and the mountains go further away, the world I knew before being left behind, replaced with a jewellery box of stars and moons.

Oxygen Deficiency Protection Lv.6>

“Haah, haah, haah, haah,” Goss gasps as he fights to bring us higher and higher. The air around us is starting to grow cold enough to form ice on my eyelashes. He shoots a glance below us. “Just a little more, just a little bit more,” he bites out, redoubling his efforts.

I have never been this high up. I’m starting to suspect that I may never be this high up again. In a way, I’m not sure if I find it exhilarating or terrifying. Maybe a bit of both, I suppose.

After a while longer, when his breath no longer runs WHITE, Goss turns to look down. He smiles.

Letting his wings fan out fully, the feathers on his tail doing the same, Goss begins to soar rather than merely fly. We aren’t quite above the clouds, but we’re close enough to where the world below us appears pitifully small. Holding me close to his chest, he uses his other hand to point at the world below us. “See that?” he says above the roaring of the wind. “That’s Loathe Summit. And over there is Apathy Peaks, and then, if you go over there, you arrive at Misery Mountain. Then, right there, you can see Mount Contempt, and even the Silent Cliffs.”

I look down at it, at the mountains and peaks, and how small the dragons inside must be from so up high. “It’s pretty.”

“Yeah,” Goss says. “But what I like most of all is how, when you’re as high up as this—and only when you’re as high up as this, and you look at it from just the right angle…” With a few shifts of the wings, he brings us around slightly. Below us, the full mountain range is visible, from beginning to end. And, honestly, now that I’m looking at it, it kind of looks like… Goss grins. “—It looks like a resting mumbler!”

Like a sleeping dragon. Yes, with the two peaks there, and the way some of the cliffs go up and down, it looks a lot like a dragon taking a nap. But, in that case… “Why isn’t it called the sleeping dragon?”

“Huh? Oh! I asked the same thing when I first got here,” Goss says, gently beating his wings every few seconds to keep us aflight. “Father Moonlight explained that it came from an old wolf’s tale about a mumbler.” As he speaks, Goss’ voice becomes like that of a storyteller, almost in the same way Fr. Moonlight told the tale of the god of goblins and the goddess of dragons. “Back when goblins came from dragons, there was a very mean and cranky dragon. He was a cruel dragon, who loved nothing better than to break up lovers. So, he would steal away maidens, and when their lovers would come to rescue them, he would give them a choice. Either they let him eat their lover, or they let him eat them. Whoever lived would be released—at least, that’s what he said.

“But, cruel as he was, whatever the person picked, he would do the opposite. So if you wanted to die for your lover, he would instead kill your lover, and let you go free. See, that was his biggest cruelty—the horrible mercy he always gave.”

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Hm, mercy as cruelty… Now where have I heard that one…?

While I mutter about my own things, Goss continues. “And he kept doing that, until one day, when he kidnapped a poor farmer girl, and no one arrived to save her. Not knowing what else to do, he let the farmer girl live. But every day she would cry, begging him to go to her village and see if they were alright, and every day he would refuse her wishes, until she stopped pleading. She became completely silent.

“But by that point, the cruel dragon had grown to enjoy the sound of her voice. Until then, nobody had talked to him, or listened to him. So even though she didn’t ask for it anymore, one night, he set out to her village. When he got there, he found that it had been burnt to ashes by another dragon. Blinded by rage, he fought the other dragon, only barely emerging the victor. When he returned to his cave, he found that the farmer girl had escaped. In despair, the dragon set out, wandering the world aimlessly, muttering to himself words of apology, hoping to eventually find her again and beg for forgiveness.”

He falls silent. I glance up at him. “Um, is that… where it ends?”

“Depends on the version,” Goss says. “The way Father told it, the poor farmer girl actually went away to go to the village on her own, getting there and only barely missing the dragon. Hoping to thank him, she would then set out on her own mission. However, by the time she found him, he had already become the first mumbler. Pitying his mindlessness, she gave him a kiss, putting him to rest and letting his body become the Resting Mumbler mountain range.”

Honestly, I’m not sure if that’s a happy ending or not. “Isn’t there an ending where they end up together? Or at least where they meet, and she can forgive him properly?”

Goss pauses a moment, humming to himself. “I guess there might be, but since it’s supposed to lead up to the presence of a mountain range, it would need at least a bittersweet ending.”

“Yeah, probably.” As we circle around the mountain range, my eyes fall on the empty hollows at the head of the mountain range, their blank voids staring up at me, simultaneously tearless and mourning. “Hey, Goss?” He blinks down at me. I tilt my head at him. “What even is a mumbler? You said this guy was the first, so that suggests there are more dragons that wander aimlessly and become mountains.”

“You don’t know—well, I knew that, but…” He shakes his head. “Um, okay… You know Ymir?”

“Yeah?”

“Unless we kill him within like five years, he’s going to become a mumbler.”

“...What?”

“Usually, the killing rite happens when a dragon is thirty-seven and a half years old, because the youngest-ever mumbler was thirty-eight. If we don’t do that, then they become mumblers. It takes a few months once it starts, but once it’s done, they turn into these mindless wandering things that do nothing but mumble incomprehensible gibberish and, well… walk.” I perk an eyebrow at him. “Which sounds unproblematic when you hear it first, but, like… They’re still dragons.”

“...Ah.”

“Yeah. So, if you don’t kill them before they become mumblers, they’ll start to walk through basically anything. Walls, trees, buildings, forests, people… They aren’t as bad as four-winged dragons in terms of destruction, but to the goblins, they’re still kill-on-sight.”

“So, you’re telling me,” I say measuredly, “that when a dragon hits their middle age… they get dragon dementia?”

“...Maybe? I’m not sure what that is, but I guess?”

I stroke my chin. Killing rite. Ymir. Killing Ymir. Type five: suicidalist. Type five, hatred of the self. Killing rite. Kill Ymir. Kill… Ymir…

I feel a lightbulb flash in my head. “Goss,” I say.

“Hm?”

“I think I might know how to turn you into a four-winged dragon.”

Goss lights up into a surprised smile. “Really? Wow, that’s awesome! What did you have in mind?”

“You’re a suicidalist—apparently. So, you hate yourself.”

“I’m not sure if I—”

“So, you hate yourself. In order to become a four-winged dragon, if I’ve understood it correctly, you need to confront the thing you hate and kind of defeat it or something.”

“That’s a bit simple, and we really don’t know exactly why—”

“So, you need to defeat the thing you hate. You hate yourself. I can’t condone you killing yourself, because if that doesn’t count to me defeating the floor then I’m stuck here forever. Hence, you need to defeat yourself without defeating yourself.” Dramatic pause. Goss doesn’t say anything. I continue. “So, what’s the next best thing after you?”

“...You?”

“Not me.” I grin. “Another type five.”

Finally, it hits him. His jaw drops open and he briefly stops flying, causing us to plummet a second or so before he’s able to catch himself. “You can’t seriously mean—”

“I can.”

“But the killing rite is usually handled by Father Moonlight, I can’t possibly—”

“You can.”

“There’s no way that the parties would be willing to let a whelp commit the killing rite—”

“There is.”

Goss pauses. He turns to me slowly. “...Is there really?”

I cross my arms in an attempt to exude an inch of the confidence I’m lacking. “They’re politicians, Goss.” It doesn’t take any effort to let the grin split my face further as I affix him with my gaze. “Haven’t you ever heard of lobbying?”