An eerie silence fell over the hall.
The metal case had been completely opened by the mechanical devices, revealing the item inside to everyone. The moment that pale golden sphere appeared, Gawain's thought of This pony must be messing with me vanished like smoke. Whatever else it might be, he could be certain of one thing: this really was a dragon egg...
The dragons—the dragons who had survived Tarlonnd's great collapse, the dragons who had sent an envoy across the Northern Ocean and countless mountains and rivers to establish relations after suffering devastating losses—had gone to all this trouble to give him a dragon egg.
By all reason, unless Melita's head had been damaged in the previous war, she surely would not joke with him about where this egg came from.
After a full two minutes of silence, Gawain finally broke it. "...The goddess you mentioned was Enya, wasn't it?"
A trace of complexity appeared on Melita's face. With a sigh, she said softly, "Yes—the protection also locked away Tarlonnd's gods. Enya... I can directly speak Her name now."
"Then what exactly is the meaning of this egg?" For the first time, Gawain felt that his brain was not quite enough. His eyelid twitched slightly, and he had to make a considerable effort to keep his tone calm. "Why would your god leave a final wish asking you to hand this egg to me? No, more importantly—why is there such an egg at all?"
The moment Gawain finished speaking, Amber beside him wore a rather strange expression. The half-elf whipped her head around and stared straight at Gawain's face, looking as though she wanted to say something but held herself back. She was undoubtedly brewing an audacious speech of some eight hundred words, but her basic sense of danger and