The dragon hatchlings incubated in factories, the lifelong implanted modifications and enhancer addiction, everything controlled by a massive Artificial Intelligence, the sharply divided upper and lower worlds, the temples, the lower city, the factories, the districts, the priests, the councilors, the elders, the commoners, the automatically operating cities, the employees customized by corporations.
Tarlonnd.
The "Dragon" Kingdom.
Everything here had left a deep impression on Gawain. The shock of it had even surpassed what he had seen and heard when he first stepped out of his tomb. In just one day of sightseeing and visits, every impression he had held of the Dragon Kingdom had been utterly overturned.
All notions of dragons as mysterious, powerful, elegant, and majestic had been shattered by reality. The world built from the imaginations of bards and playwrights had fallen apart, leaving behind only bizarre fragments, a twisted and absurd image, and countless thoughts and speculations.
Before a Tarlonnd like this, those tales of knights slaying Evil Dragons with swords, dragons making pacts with heroes, castles, kingdoms, and wars against dragons suddenly became rather endearing, even carrying a warm glow.
Gawain suddenly seemed to understand why so many "travelers" from the Dragon Kingdom went to the human world and became bards, writing so many bizarre dragon legends completely unlike the truth. He understood why "upper-class dragons" like Melita could be bored enough to write piles of fabricated novels about heroes fighting Evil Dragons, even using her friends as models for the characters.
He had once thought those were merely tedious and baffling quirks, but now... he could not help suspecting that perhaps they were some form of remembrance. A remembrance of the pastoral life dragons had once possessed, one that did not rely on enhancers and implants, on Artificial Intelligence and automated cities—or perhaps merely