She dared to open her eyes. Tessandra had raised her sword above them to protect them from the debris, and her body was acting like a shield for Nana too. However, blood suddenly appeared on her face, a long trail running from her hairline to her chin. The vision of Tessandra injured suddenly had an effect like another bang for Naptunie. She opened her eyes wide, pinched her lips and frowned.

“No!” she suddenly exclaimed.

“W-what?”

Before Tessandra could add a word, Naptunie suddenly got down and escaped her protection, running out to see the damages.

“Nana, come back!”

She wasn’t listening at all. Naptunie’s eyes were going left, right, analyzing the scene of each crash without any fear for her own safety. When Tessandra caught up with her, she suddenly spun around before the fighter could say a word.

“They are firing from the direction of the bridge we didn’t leave Sir Darsan nor one of the dragons at! Judging from the distance, they must be right outside the Outer Wall! And if I’m right, they can’t fire any farther than this, but I don’t know how many catapults they have!”

“Are you sure?” muttered Tessandra, shocked.

“Absolutely sure!”

Naptunie’s eyes did show how confident she was. Tessandra glanced around; she had no idea how the hell she was able to calculate that, but she had to believe Nana either way. For most people, those things seemed to appear truly out of nowhere, and the speed didn’t give them any time for analysis, nor to run. Another one appeared in the sky, and Tessandra grabbed Nana again to take her to what she hoped to be a safe spot. They protected their heads and waited until the damage was done.

“Judging from the rhythm, they have at least two,” said Nana, coughing from some dust. “Two catapults. But they have to be really big to carry such a heavy weight, and by the time they recharge...”

“Nana, Nana, calm down! Focus. You said those things can’t go any farther, right? Can you tell the farthest they can land? What is the safe zone?”

Naptunie turned around, quickly doing the math. Tessandra had asked the question just in case, but she did not actually expect Nana to be able to predict this much... She was proven wrong once again when Nana’s little finger pointed at the end of a nearby building.

“From there... to there,” she said. “I’m almost sure they cannot hit any farther than that!”

“A-alright... Alright, I’ll get Kassian to move our side to that area. But Nana, he’s going to need my help here, too many people got hit already. Someone needs to stop those machines.”

“Understood!”

Nana waited and a couple of seconds of silence passed as she seemed to wait for Tessandra to turn to someone else. When Tessandra raised an eyebrow, her confident expression sank.

“Y-you can’t mean... me?”

“Don’t worry, I’m not sending you alone to destroy those. But you showed us you can sneak past the fighting, and you know the area like the back of your hand too. Just get to the bridge where Krai is, and take him with you to destroy those things.”

“W-w-what?!” exclaimed Naptunie, turning pale. “Tessa, you can’t expect me to borrow Sir Dragon like that!”

“He likes you Nana! Don’t worry, he’s smarter than he looks, he’ll listen!”

“B-but I don’t even have a single beignet with me! And I’ll be going alone? He can’t possibly listen to me like that!”

“I said, he likes you! Not just your beignets! Just go, Nana, hurry!”

A bit reluctantly, Naptunie turned around, and Tessandra pushed her toward what she had indicated as the safe zone. Nana glanced back; the situation was dire in the plaza. Many people had been injured by the falling spiky weights, and the Yekara were running to regain the area they had lost. She took a deep breath, spotting her brother amidst the confusion. She would be useless here. She could probably do something if it was with Sir Dragon’s help. He’d listen, right?

Trying not to think too much, Naptunie turned around and ran quickly.

“Oh, Sir Dragon,” she muttered to herself, “I really hope you’re in a good mood...”

Naptunie kept muttering to herself as she ran, trying to manage her breathing whilst being cautious of her surroundings; she was good at avoiding fights, but the area she was headed toward seemed to be the most dangerous of all. There were Yekara soldiers and mercenaries everywhere, and she had to retrace her steps or hide several times to avoid them. A couple of times, she even had no choice but to climb on top of a house, over the roof, and land on the next street to avoid them. It was just as she had predicted: the farther she got from the main place where Kassian, Tessandra and Sabael fought, the harder it was to switch from one street to another. Right now, she was doing her very best to use everything she knew about the area to keep out of trouble.

She could still hear the projectiles violently hitting buildings or the ground far behind her, and every time, she feared for the others’ lives. If it wasn’t for that sound, regularly echoing behind her, perhaps Naptunie would have given up on Tessandra’s crazy idea. At least, it seemed crazy to her. She wasn’t just going to see Sir Dragon, she was supposed to actually convince the beast to attack a different area, and very specific weapons too! Nana had no idea how she was going to do that, though. She had never missed her family’s beignets so much... Still, she kept running, thinking she’d figure out the situation once she got there... Luckily, as she diverted from the path to the one leading to the bridge Krai was on, she met less and less Yekara soldiers. In fact, many were running in the opposite direction, and couldn’t be bothered with a Dorosef girl running on her own. The closer she got to the bridge, though, the more Nana’s worries shifted from the explosions and men behind her, to the loud, terrifying growls she was running toward.

The Inner Wall’s gates had been completely abandoned, to her surprise, and she arrived there to find the area completely deserted. On the other side of those gates, though, she could hear absolute carnage going on.

Naptunie stopped behind the gates, a cold chill running down her spine. She could hear the dragon’s loud growls and men screaming, shouting behind, the sound of swords clashing, and even bodies splashing into the water from time to time. Not only that, but the ground under her was literally shaking. She couldn’t blame the men for having abandoned that area of the city; she was regretting being there herself... Trying to keep in mind the urgency of the situation and the sight of a dragon calmly eating beignets out of her hand, Naptunie closed her fists, and after a deep breath, used all of her strength to push the heavy gates. Just that already took a lot of effort and a little while as she had never realized how heavy those really were. She struggled to push them until she could sneak past, stepping alone on the bridge. Or, more accurately, alone on her side of the bridge.

The other end was, as she had imagined, a bloody massacre. Krai’s large body was occupying almost all of the bridge’s width, and even its black tail was dangerously swishing left and right, a few yards ahead of where Nana stood. The dragon’s back and butt were mostly blocking her sight, but the little she could see from what was happening on the other side already terrified her. There was a lot of blood. Not only that, but she could see human limbs regularly being thrown sideways, some ending up in the river when the dragon didn’t enthusiastically chomp it mid-air.

“Oh, holy fish...” she muttered.

Nana had already seen a lot of blood and bodies today, but a dragon devouring living humans was a whole new level of horror for her. She could see the Black Dragon was having fun, toying around with them, its large paw suddenly squishing a human body against the white bricks of the bridge. Naptunie took a deep breath. She was supposed to bother Sir Dragon in the middle of that? Had Tessandra gone insane?! There was no way she wouldn’t be gobbled up too! Still, she could hear, and now also see, the large spiky balls of metal flying in the sky to brutally land in the Capital. Nana didn’t even need to think about the damages done; the mere confirmation that she had been right, the projectiles coming from the Outer Wall, was enough to reassure her she had been right to run here.

Despite that, she only dared to take a couple of steps toward the dragon; she had to admire the men on the other side, who were still fighting hard to try and get past anyway despite the large, bloody piles of bodies already spread across the bridge... Krai didn’t even need to move much; the humans were running right in the dragon’s direction, swords up, and a large bite was enough to welcome them and chomp three men’s bodies at once. Naptunie stood there for several seconds, trying to think about the best way to get the dragon’s attention without being the next one eaten up. As much as she trusted Tessandra, she really didn’t have much confidence in taming a dragon when she didn’t have the right treat for it... or she potentially was the treat herself.

With pearls of sweat running down her nape, she cautiously stepped forward.

“S-Sir Dragon?” she called out.

She was almost relieved when she got no response. She took another deep breath, immediately followed by a huge bang behind her, which gave her the wave of bravery to try again. If her friends’ life depended on her, she could do it!

“Sir Dragon!”

This time, Krai suddenly lifted its large head, and one red eye finally spotted Naptunie, standing alone in the middle of the bridge. Naptunie felt her bravery melt like snow under the sun. Luckily, so did all her ability to move, and when the dragon turned around to face her, completely ignoring the dozens of men, its hips swooped across the bridge in the process, she could only try to take deep breaths and keep the blood flowing to her brain.

“H-hi...” she heard her voice mutter.

The dragon’s head suddenly came to meet her, snout first, strangely lowered and grazing the ground as if it was trying to match her height. Even more disturbing was the blood-covered human hand hanging out from between two fangs. Naptunie blinked twice, and forced herself to look up at the pair of glowing ruby eyes.

“I-I kind of need your help...” she muttered.

The dragon tilted its head, almost in a cute way. She could hear the blades on the other side trying to attack the wall of scales, but as soon as they got a bit annoying, the huge scaled butt and paws would move a bit, and suddenly crush more of them underneath. The stomping was enough to make the whole bridge tremble and creak, making Nana fear it would actually collapse under its weight... It was built to let horses and carriages through, but not a gigantic creature like a full-grown dragon!

When Krai growled softly, its breathing reaching her in hot waves of air, Naptunie took another deep breath.

“W-we need to get over there,” she said, trying to talk fast, “to the other bridge, outside the wall, and destroy the catapults! I-I know it’s not the original p-plan, but Lady Tessa sent me, and, uh... it’s important...”

The more she spoke, the more she realized the chance the dragon caught any of that were rather low. She had always seen Tessandra and Cessilia casually speak to the dragon, and Krai seemed to somehow understand the gist of it, but this was her first time alone! She tried to imagine she was speaking to the family cat, before realizing it wouldn’t help either. The dragon was probably smarter, to some extent... Naptunie glanced to the side, feeling increasingly nervous. She was wasting so much time right now! She could endure the gruesomeness of the dragon, but if she lost any time here, more lives would be lost, and she did not want to be responsible for this!

Nana clenched her small fists, and tried to imagine what the pair of Princesses would do in her stead. Her eyes went back to the piece of limb hanging from the dragon’s maw, still very disturbing.

“D-drop it!”

She had tried to put as much intent as she could, and even pointed her index toward the ground. However, after a few seconds of silence, the dragon began to very slowly resume chewing.

“N-no, I said drop it! Oh, come on, that’s... a bit disgusting... I’m sure it’s not really good for your stomach either, Sir Dragon... Yuck...”