章 80: The World Below - Chionothýella
The weather in the north was severe. Not even being inside a cave protected them from the cold.
It was morning and Hercules trembled as if he were going to start vibrating in any moment.
Unlike Athena, who for some reason demonstrated magnificent resistance to cold, Hercules and the children felt their organs slowing down as if they had been freezing over time.
"If you stand still, you die." Athena said with her eyes closed.
She was sitting with her legs bent and her hands forming a circle on the height of her waist. The children were lying around her, trying to steal some warmth from the woman.
"Y-you're s-sh-stopped a-and y-you d-don't d-die-ee." Hercules said.
"That's weird, huh... Since I woke up, I haven't been cold. I'm actually hot."
"S-so let me ge-get c-closer to y-you..."
Athena shook her head slightly. "No way. You were staring at my breasts and you weren't within their reach... I don't want to have to kill you until I pay what I owe you."
"I... I'm m-aan... Lo-look at them w-was unavoidable..." Hercules turned his head, staring at the stormy scenery outside the cave. "If d-di-didn't h-have th-this bi-bli-blizzard..."
"I told you to get more firewood..." Athena took a deep breath and then let it out sharply. "Come stay with the kids, I'll go get the firewood."
Athena got up, stretched, and walked into the storm that insisted on falling for more than six hours.
Even with nothing protecting and warming her upper body, Athena only felt an slight cold on her skin that soon disappeare it hindered her vision.
Everything was white no matter which way she looked. She didn't even see the cave entrance anymore.
Athena focused her eyes in front of her and continued. She didn't know where she was going and hoped she wouldn't fall into the canyon that had somewhere there.
She felt the ground in front of her with her feet and then she felt something colder than snow and harder than frozen ground.
Athena stomped harder on the smooth surface and then felt a rush of warm air from above.
(Thee, tell me, why do thee smell like a dragon?) Asked a voice that sounded like the wind.
Athena looked around, looking for the owner of the voice, but she already understood.
The voice had not entered her ears, but her mind. It was a familiar feeling and made Athena think of her daughter, Fotiá.
"Who's there?" Athena screamed through that storm.
Due to her inner disorder, Athena couldn't even feel the presence that was in front of her that wasn't visible due to the curtain of snow.
(My self is before thee eyes.)
The voice said and a blast of heat hit the top of Athena's head again. Athena looked up and her expression twisted.
"Huh? Eyes?" Athena saw intense blue eyes floating through the decaying snow. "What you are?"
(My self asked a question first. Why this smell of dragon come from thee?)
"Why do you want to know?" Athena crossed her arms. "I can be a dragon."
(Thee? A dragon?) The eyes narrowed and then... (Ku...Kuahahahaha!)
Athena frowned, not understanding why that thing was laughing. "What's the fun?"
(My self apologizes, but thee are not a dragon.) Athena's eyes lowered and she could see something. (Thee are human... No, high-human.)
"And you…" Athena's eyes were wide and her jaw dropped. "Are you a dragon...?"
Ahead of Athena, a silhouette the size of a cart stared at her with gleaming eyes.
(Um... My self is a dragon and you have something more besides the dragon smell... But my self can't understand what it is... Hm? Is there two things? A sword?) The dragon approached his immense face and revealed its white scales. (You are interesting... An extinct race, a dragon, a sword and something unknown... My self likes you.)
Athena's heart was racing and her wide eyes were trembling with fear as was the rest of her body.
(It's impossible to win against this thing in my state... No... I wouldn't even win before.) Athena thought.
Athena was feeling an immense overwhelming power.
It was an oppression that she had only felt once. Athena felt the same sense of terror that she felt in the temple of all the gods when that thing of pure darkness attacked or saved her.
She hadn't decided what had happened yet.
Death and Uran, the goddesses that Athena has encountered, did not demonstrate their full power.
Their very existence was power and they didn't emanate it. It was not necessary.
The dragon's blue eyes narrowed again and it's scaly, horned head tilted like that of a curious dog. (Are thee cold?)
"Huh?"
(Thee are shaking...)
Athena looked down at her uncontrollably shaking arms and hands. She hugged herself, holding back her own trembling and fear, and smiled a wry smile at the dragon.
"Ahaha..." Athena laughed dryly. "And I'm fine."
(Why my self don't accompany thee to thee home?)
"Ah!" Athena exclaimed as she remembered why she was there and forgot her fear as if she had never felt it. "I need to go. You don't fit where I'm camping." Athena waved a hasty goodbye to the dragon and turned her back to the creature. "I need to find firewood or those kids will die..."
"The house of thee is small?" The dragon asked while following Athena
"It's not my house, it's a cave." Athena replied absently.
"Ah~... Here, my self had found the firewood that thee are looking for."
"Thanks, but even…huh?"
When Athena turned around, there was no longer a dragon, but a girl with long white hair.
The girl wore a black and white Victorian dress, and in the hand she offered Athena, there was an entire tree.
"Are you the dragon?" Athena asked dumbfoundedly.
"Yes, my self is that dragon from before." The girl replied. "My self goes by the name of "Chionothýella". My self offers thee her regards."
"Ah! I'm Athena..." Athena introduced herself following Chionothýella's pace, but within seconds her mind returned to what she wanted to say. "No! Why are you following me?"
Chionothýella raised her eyebrows in surprise at the question and lowered the tree. "My self wants to understand thee."
"I'm not an object of study! Why all this sudden interest in me?" Athena frowned. "Don't you have dragon's things to do?"
"My self woke up when felt thee presence. My self has nothing else to do. My self will stay with thee for some time." Chionothýella said and squeezed the tree in her hand, destroying it into hundreds or thousands of smaller pieces.
Athena looked at the girl gathering wood from the snow. (Did she wake up because of me? No, wait... Even though she woke up because she felt my presence, it has nothing to do with me...)
"Here is the firewood that thee wants." Chionothýella said as she offered a quantity of wood to the athena, pulling the woman out of her thoughts.
Athena took the firewood and briefly thanked her. "Well... Now we say goodbye here. Have a good life... See you..." Athena walked a few steps, but then Athena stopped suddenly and turned to face Chionothýella. "What is your name again?"
Chionothýella's eyes widened in surprise. A dragon having its name forgotten by an inferior race was an unforgivable thing that could easily be punishable with death, but...
Chionothýella didn't show any kind of hostile reaction, in fact she laughed at the fact that Athena couldn't remember her name.
(The first time that someone has treated my self like this after learning that my self is a dragon... As my self had thought, that person is interesting.)
Athena tilted her head, waiting for an answer as she stared into blue eyes that looked like ice gems.
"Once again... My self goes by the name of Chionothýella." The dragon struck a courtly lady pose, holding the skirt of her dress and bending her knees as she introduced herself. "Chionothýella of the white dragon clan."
Upon hearing the name for the third time, Athena repeated it over and over in her mind, but her mouth refused to cooperate in the pronunciation and she gave up. "Your name is very difficult. I'll call you 'Ella'."
"Ella?" Chionothýella asked and smiled graciously. "Ella..."
"..." Just seeing that smile, Athena felt a strange twinge and then shook her head. "I have to go. See you around, Ella."
"Why can't my self go with thee?" Ella insisted.
"Because dragons are complicated creatures. I'm already up to my neck in complicated creatures." Athena replied without turning around. "I have to get back to the cave before the four of them die."
"Thee knows that thee cave isn't that way, right?"
"Is not?" Athena stopped and turned away, not knowing which way it was.
The snowstorm was so strong that visibility was almost zero.
It was a miracle Athena could see and hear Ella through all that snow and howling wind.
"Now thee is going further..." Ella said as she continued to follow Athena. "My self can take thee back to the cave."
Athena turned to the dragon who held the form of a fifteen-year-old girl and let her shoulders slump.
She was tired of walking in the snow and she wanted to focus on fixing her mana. Athena allowed herself to be guided by Ella to the cave.
"I returned." Athena told the huddled that it was Hercules and the children.
Hercules opened his eyes and saw Athena and Ella through his frozen eyelashes. "W-who is this girl?"
"Are these people okay?" Ella asked seeing Athena trying to light a fire with wet wood.
"No, they are almost dying from the cold." Athena said through her teeth. Annoyed that the fire wouldn't start. "That damn fire that doesn't light..."
"Why don't you use magic? You have so much mana..."
That question caused a thread to snap inside Athena. She was irritated about a lot of things for a long time.
She was worried, she was homesick and she was irritated with the current state of her powers, but what she was irritating was the way Ella spoke.
"For god's sake! Speak like an ordinary person!" Athena growled. "I can't use spells or skills, if I could I would have gone home, okay?!"
Athena broke out in a scream and threw the woods on the floor as she got up and looked at Ella who didn't understand why Athena was angry.
"My self only knows how to talk that way, but..." Ella floated up to Athena's height and placed a finger on the woman's forehead.
"What you..."
Athena felt her mind drift and everything went dark.
When Athena woke up, the fire was lit, the cave was permeated with the delicious smell of roasted meat and, Ella and Hercules had become practically best friends.
(What's up with these two?) Athena looked quizzically at the couple who were sitting side by side. "What have you done to me, Ella?"
"I learned the way you speak." Ella responded in the same friendly intonation she used before, but with less formality. "Hm... You were right, the way I spoke was pretty outdated."
"Fuh~..." Athena sighed and looked at the children who were drooling down the thigh of some monster roasting over the fire's flames. "This meat is from what?"
"Orc." Ella responded without showing any remorse and Athena was disgusted. "What's it?"
Orcs were a barbarian race that resembled humanoid boars. Athena saw them more as savages than monsters and she even used them in her army.
After all they had intelligence and could speak, unlike trolls and other humanities monsters, like minotaurs and harpies.
"No... It's nothing." Athena said. She didn't want to spoil the appetite of children who needed to eat. "I'm not hungry."
"Now that you have real meat you reject it? You're weird." Hercules said.
He imagined that orcs were just pigs that could walk. Since he arrived in this world, all he found that had intelligence were humans and demons.
The young man had never encountered other races with appearances close to humans and he thought that perhaps there were not even races other than humans and demons in the world.
The orc meat was as appetizing to Hercules as it was to the children and Ella.
"Athena, you said you couldn't use spells and skills, right?" Ella asked.
"Yes... My mana is..."
"...in disarray." Ella got up and sat facing Athena. "I can help you with that."
クリエイターの想い 
All_J
All_J My favorite character appeared!! Chionothýella my sweet, my honey.
Vote, add to your library and comment if you like it.
Please let me know if you find some error.
See ya!
週次パワーステータス
-- 推薦
ランキング 
-- 推薦
チケット