In the sky.
Voraksa flew in front, with King Ghidorah following behind.
Two enormous shadows moved across the earth, one black and one gold, one ahead and one behind, like two oddly shaped clouds blown along by the wind.
Voraksa's wingspan exceeded a hundred meters, and his dark red wing membranes gleamed ominously in the sunlight, yet against this vast sky, his figure looked much smaller.
Not because he wasn't huge, but because the fellow behind him was far too big.
King Ghidorah wasn't flying at full speed, or even at his normal speed. He merely flapped his wings lazily, letting the air currents support his massive body as he followed Voraksa with an air almost like someone out for a stroll.
Even so, the storms he stirred up still forced Voraksa to veer off course several times-not because the storms were too strong, but because he didn't want to get hit by the rocks kicked up by King Ghidorah's wings.
"You've recovered pretty well." King Ghidorah's middle head dipped slightly, his golden slit pupils sweeping over Voraksa's body.
He really had recovered pretty well. The scales that had cracked apart during his fall were now mostly healed, the newly grown scales a little lighter than those around them, like a few mismatched patches on a dark red canvas.
His shattered breastbone and dislocated spine had reconnected as well. Although they hadn't fully healed yet, at least they didn't affect his flight. As for his wings-Voraksa's right wing had recovered completely, its membrane smooth and whole, its bones strong and sturdy.
And the left wing that King Ghidorah's lightning had severed at the root had also grown back a little.
Only a little, probably less than two meters long. Its membrane was still just a thin layer, soft and weak as a baby's fingers, making feeble flapping sounds when it beat.
But Voraksa no longer needed his wings to fly. He released the magic within him, forming an invisible lifting field around his body, and hovered steadily in the air like a kite suspended from invisible strings.
Flapping his wings was more of a habitual motion, like humans swinging their arms as they walked. It wasn't necessary, but not doing it felt awkward.
"Not bad..." Voraksa's voice was somewhat indistinct, not out of reluctance, but because he was rapidly thinking through how to answer without angering the one behind him.
His four eyes glanced down from time to time, surveying the terrain below.
The farther they flew, the more wrong things looked.
Where was this? In his memory, this region should have been a vast plain, with a continuous mountain range at its far end. Deep within the mountains ran a great river, and on its southern bank stood a palace built from enormous white stones, belonging to a certain dragon elder.
Although that palace wasn't his, he knew its location, how to get there, and its general layout.
He planned to take King Ghidorah there. If the palace was still standing, he would say it was his; if it was gone, he would say the gods had destroyed it and it had nothing to do with him.
But now, what he saw wasn't a plain. It was water.
Not the long, narrow, winding water of a river flowing in a particular direction, but an immense expanse that had submerged the entire land, resembling both a lake and an ocean.
The water was murky and yellowish-brown, with broken timber, dead leaves, and the carcasses of unknown animals floating on it.
A few hills poked out of the water in the distance like the arms of drowning people. All the trees on those hills had died, leaving only bare, gray-white trunks swaying slightly in the wind.
What happened? Had there been a massive flood here? Could floods change the terrain?
Voraksa was a little bewildered. Having slept for so many years, he knew the world would change, but he had imagined changes on the scale of seas turning into farmland, slow processes that took millions of years to complete.
He had never imagined that he would wake up to find an entire plain gone, replaced by a vast lake with no end in sight.
His brain couldn't quite keep up. Not because he was stupid, but because that brain of his, left over from the age of the gods and sealed for tens of thousands of years, hadn't fully switched from "sleep mode" to "awake mode."
It processed information very slowly, like an old computer loading an enormous file, its progress bar stuck at thirty percent and refusing to budge.
He thought and thought, and thought some more.
Finally, he came up with a possibility.
After he had been sealed, the gods had continued their great wars for a long time. Those god kings, chief gods, subordinate gods, and demigods had fought until heaven and earth shattered and the sun and moon lost their light, breaking continents, churning oceans, and tearing the sky apart. How long had those wars lasted?
Hundreds of years? Thousands? Tens of thousands? He didn't know. But he knew that if those gods really had shattered the continents, changes to the terrain would have been perfectly normal.
In other words-that white palace in his memory, that palace built from huge stones, standing on the plain, belonging to a certain dragon elder-very likely no longer existed.
Never mind the palace, even the plain was gone. With the plain turned into a lake, could the palace still be sitting underwater? Even if it was, after soaking for tens of thousands of years, even the stone would have softened and crumbled. Could a dragon still live there?
Voraksa began flapping his wings more slowly.
Not from exhaustion, but from a guilty conscience.
"What's wrong?" King Ghidorah's voice came from behind him, neither loud nor soft, with a casualness that sent a chill down Voraksa's back.
If Voraksa had been human, he would probably have been drenched in sweat by now.
Unfortunately, he wasn't human. He had no sweat glands, and regulated his body temperature through the expansion and contraction of the blood vessels beneath his scales.
So he simply felt hot. Not the heat of the sun beating down on him, but an indescribable heat welling up from within that made him want to find a crack in the ground and crawl into it.
"Well... this..." Voraksa's voice came in fits and starts, like an old radio tuning between frequencies. "Um... that..."
"What are you trying to say?"
All three of King Ghidorah's heads leaned forward slightly, six golden slit pupils fixed on Voraksa's back. That gaze was like six red-hot knives gouging at his scales over and over.
Voraksa opened his mouth, then closed it again.
How should he answer? Say, "I remembered wrong"? Say, "The terrain changed"? Say, "The palace you're looking for might be gone"?
No matter how he put it, the result would be the same-he had taken this mighty fellow out for a little sightseeing flight, only to tell him there was nothing there. The last time he had displeased this fellow, he had lost his left wing. What about this time?
Voraksa's body wobbled in midair.
Not because of the wind, but because his magic output had fluctuated. His brain was working at high speed, consuming a great deal of energy and temporarily destabilizing the supply of magic maintaining his flight.
He hurriedly steadied himself and refocused his attention on flying, but at the very instant he adjusted his posture-
The stump of his left wing accidentally brushed against the magical lifting field he had released.
It wasn't anything serious. Just like someone accidentally brushing their arm against their own clothes while walking.