The red dragon was defeated. The adventurers had been pushed to the limits of their endurance and had put the creature to its slumber at last.

§

“……”

They stood all but doubled over, their breath coming hard. They were still trying to take in the situation. They couldn’t see the dragon anymore, and they heard the gentle rumble of its snoring, but somehow it still didn’t quite seem real.

Even as they acknowledged the fact of their achievement, they still felt no triumph or joy. All of them were smeared with soot and dark smoke. The stench of sulfur and miasma clung to them, and their heads hurt. Their skin was preternaturally dry from exposure to the great heat, and their eyes and throats burned. Some of them wanted nothing more than to jump into a river right about now. Others would have given anything for a drink of wine.

As for Goblin Slayer, he just wanted to go home. Go home and eat some stew and sleep.

Or perhaps he was dreaming now. He could hardly believe such a thing had actually happened to him. It was like the silly imagining of some child.

“Ah…”

Then it came to him. He had felt lost before this battle, a feeling that vanished entirely during the fight. He picked up a single red scale that had been torn off during the battle, but when he moved to put it by his hip, he was reminded that he didn’t have his pouch.

“…Here you go.” Priestess jogged up to him and handed him the pouch with an exhausted smile.

“Thank you,” Goblin Slayer said and took it, then tucked the scale carefully inside.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“A gift,” he said.

He had no interest in taking any of the dragon’s treasure. It was said that if you took even a single gold coin from a dragon’s hoard, it would chase you to the grave to get it back. There was even a story of a land where the vassals of a certain councilor had stolen a cup and been burned up by a dragon, which the aged king had then destroyed all by himself.

What was more, though—Goblin Slayer had no desire to obtain treasure. He was already satisfied. He knew from experience that giving her money only seemed to make her angry.

“She had one particular request—but as for anything more, I couldn’t decide what to do.”

That was all it took. Those words cut the tension among the party, and suddenly everyone relaxed. The first to let out a sharp breath and toss herself backward into the sand was High Elf Archer. “Are we alive? We are alive, aren’t we? I kinda can’t believe it.”

“Yes, we are alive. ‘By the skin of our teeth,’ I believe the expression is.” Lizard Priest sounded downright easygoing—and the nod he gave was truly satisfied. The strength of his forefathers had already fled his body, and blood seemed to be pouring out of him. But he looked almost pleased about this, making a strange hands-together gesture of thanks to his forebears. “I did not imagine that one so small and weak as myself might be blessed with the chance to confront a dragon!” Still grinning, he began to intone prayers of healing.

High Elf Archer remarked that “Oh yeah, he’d had one miracle left, hadn’t he?”

“…You think this makes us dragon slayers?” she asked after a moment.

“More like dragon sleepers,” Dwarf Shaman said, sitting down heavily. “Not quite as, uh, cool.” He sounded distinctly sour about it. “As if we were ever going to beat a dragon fighting like that,” he spat out. He turned his flask upside down over his mouth, licking out the last drops of wine. “Not to mention when we get home, I’ll have to make up a song about this adventure. Gods, it makes my head hurt…”

He continued to complain: This was why he hated relying on the Sandman.

“Want some help?” High Elf Archer offered, but he snorted, “Don’t need it.”

In the blink of an eye, they had gone from this simple disagreement to a full-fledged, classic argument. Priestess, finding the familiar sound oddly sleep-inducing, let out a little yawn.

“I’m…tired,” said Female Merchant, sitting down as if her legs had failed her. She probably didn’t have the strength to get up. Exhaustion had never seemed a better descriptor of what they were feeling. Priestess, feeling much sympathy with Female Merchant, sat down beside her. Her whole body felt heavy; she let out another yawn. “Me too.”

“Let’s stay at least a day in town,” Female Merchant said, after murmuring to herself. “Yes, that’s a good idea. We can take a bath. I will take a bath.”

Priestess chuckled and nodded at her. As they sat there side by side, their heads bumped into each other. They couldn’t even sit up straight anymore. They leaned against each other for support, and Female Merchant’s warmth made Priestess even sleepier.

Maybe the Sandman is…still here…

A third yawn accompanied the thought. As she rubbed her eyes, she heard Lizard Priest laughing. “After goblins, a dragon. Whoever the enemy commander may have been, they chose a poor way of doing things.”

“…?” Priestess, not understanding, opened her mouth in an effort to ask what he meant.

“It’s a warning from the Age of the Gods.” The answer came from Goblin Slayer, busy emptying the contents of a canteen into his visor. “My master mentioned it to me once.”

It is said, one must not cast the good “pawns” after the bad.

“It means that when you’ve been defeated, you shouldn’t be so set on using up your trump card.”

That made sense. Priestess nodded. She didn’t understand it completely, but it made a certain kind of sense. Her thinking didn’t quite seem steady; thoughts with no context bubbled up and then faded away.

Someday, a dragon.

She remembered the red-haired wizard saying something like that. Not the elf. Someone more familiar—just the once.

The boy with a sword. The girl with black hair. They hadn’t all had time to get to know one another, yet still the words had been said. They had been a sort of promise, a sort of wish, a sort of hope.

“Warnings? I know one, too.”

Someday. Someday, certainly. But for now…

“Never make a deal with a dragon.”

For now, it was a bit too soon for dragon slaying.