The Reborn Witch had a nice 'Tea Time' with the Dragon Queen today-Chapter 4: With Peace comes a New…Witch? ()

"It's only been twenty years, old friend." The dragon's voice was deep and resonant, the sound of ancient whispers through a vast cavern. She circled lazily, her wings casting shadows that danced upon the ground. "You look well, considering for how long you have hidden from us."

"Well, twenty years are enough to collect dust upon my...perverted collection." Demond chuckled, his eyes twinkling with a hint of mischief. Despite the gravity of the situation, he couldn't help but feel a spark of excitement at the sight of the majestic creature.

"And twenty year...is enough for your daughter to be one of heroes among the legends." Adrei's voice grew serious, the air around her shimmered with the intensity of her words. "I've come to ask for your death, your submission, old friend. For the sake of our kinds' wrath, for the selfish justice you brought upon our tyrant without consoling, you must die, my saviour."

The words hit him like a ton of bricks. Twenty years ago, he had slain the dragon tyrant, Adalon. A creature whose wrath had brought fear and destruction to the lands, and the one his comrade abandoned his daughter for, before the old mage saved her as Alice and perished the dragon, and coincidentally, led Adrei's rise to fame as the only successor to Adalon, along with her peace's offerings from finally escaping her father's violent abuses.

"It needs not be like this, Dragon Queen of Tamara." The old mage nodded, his gaze heavy with his beg for mercy. "Let bygones be bygones. This...this father is afraid of his own death, not for himself, but for the child he promised a banquet with."

"Yet our kind's pride won't cease to be, Demond. You know full well the consequences of your actions," Adrei replied, her words carrying the weight of generations of dragon tradition and honor. "You've had your peace, but when it's time for your end, let us face it with grace, not fear."

"...cowardice, cowardice haha..." Demond chuckled, leaning heavily on his staff. "Truthfully, I've had enough. Facing a dragon at this age? Even this old man knew there would no longer be any last spark of sudden empowerment I would have like a protagonist. Still..." His eyes grew misty, the tremble in his voice belying his fear. "I can't leave Alice without saying goodbye, without leaving her legacy a deserved praise I promised, without enjoying the peace me and my companions prayed for with these 70 years of bloodsheds and tears."

Then, unbefitting of an old mage's, the mage took from his robe's pocket a small pouch, inside was memories of his long-forgotten work days, days of sweat and tears with his co-workers as he moved tiles, bricks and mortars, while riding machines this age of Magic would have a hard time to believe existed.

And so as he hugged his staff, the old mage took from his pouch for one last time: a cigarette, fiddling it between his fingers. The dragon's fiery gaze flickered with curiosity as she watched him, her scales fluttering gently in the breeze. The act was not alien to her: she recognized that familiar gesture of contemplation, as the old mage tugged the cigarette into his bearded lips, lightened by the blaze magic at his thumb.

"Adrei...my old friend, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you have to see this pitiful old man clinging to life so desperately for my child's sake."

Then as if accepting everything, the old mage puffed out a smoke. His humility, pride, happiness, sorrow danced in the air, as the longing taste of tar and nicotine filled his mouth. A habit from his old world when his family talked of the next dinner instead of war, and a symbol of peace that was so alien to this world of magic and monsters.

"So allow this foolish old bone to struggle, for one last time, will you?" Mana gathers as the mage's staff begins to pulse with a gentle blue light. The dragon's gaze narrows, and she unleashes a fiery breath that scorches the air, signaling her intent to fight. The flames dance around Demond, colluding the cigarette's smoke in-between his fingers, but his eyes do not leave hers.

"Come." With this declaration, the old mage flicked his wrist and the cigarette transformed into a bolt of lightning, shooting straight towards the dragon.

Laughing, the dragon met the lightning with a sweep of her tail, the electricity crackling and dissipating against her scales. There is now only determination and the promise of battle in her eyes, as she spreads her wings of pride, pride not of a dragonkind, but of being worthy to face a foe of legend once more.

"Very well, old one." Adrei's voice boomed across the clearing, a mix of respect and challenge. With a powerful beat of her mighty wings, she ascended into the sky, the air displaced by her movement causing the trees to sway violently. The dragon's eyes narrowed, and she opened her jaws, revealing rows of serrated teeth that gleamed like molten gold.

As always, a rash habit to finish everything with one move, is it? The old mage scowled yet chuckled, his eyes reflecting the dragon's fiery gaze. With a swift motion, he raised his staff high into the air, the blue light swirling into a cyclone of power around him. The very air crackled with anticipation as the dragon dove, her wings folded back as her jaws now harboured a maelstrom of fire, ready to unleash her fury upon the ground beneath.

The old mage took a deep breath, the air around him thick with the heat of Adrei's breath and the electric anticipation of their imminent clash. He focused his mind, channeling the power of the elements into his staff.

"I dreamed of a World without frost." The old mage chanted, as he raised his staff that glowed of blue, the color of a frosty dawn. The air around him grew colder, the heat of the dragon's breath countered by the sudden chill that spread from the tip of his staff. Ice began to form around the mage, a crystalline armor that grew stronger with every beat of his clentching lungs.

"I weeped for the sorrows of the forgotten." Demond's voice was calm, steady and resonant as the chant continued. His eyes, now as blue as the ice that surrounded him, bore into Adrei's fiery gaze. The dragon felt the chill in the air, the temperature dropping so quickly it was as if the sun had abandoned them.

"In a snowfield that howled only of silence, I alone stood tall." The ice then coated his body, his whisper echoing through the clearing. The dragon's fiery scale was drenched wet as smoke hissed from the sudden temperature drop, a clash of frost and fire.

"Yet the destined death may never reach, and innocents shan't be paid my sin's folly." Demond's chant grew louder, the air around him shimmering with the promise of an icy tempest. The staff, glowing the lightest it has seen since decades, now shivered with power that seemed to have a mind of its own. The wood would not last long, but as if echoing the last stand of its master, it held firm, unyielding.

"And so may my cries be heard, a blizzard that enshrouded only me and thee." Demond's final incantation pierced the air as he pointed his staff towards his long-last rival, comrade, and perhaps, in some ways, the one he truly feared to face, not of death that will come, but of the unspoken future after his death.

"For I rest here my prayer: a lost requiem." Demond silently declared, the words tearing through the air like a sonic boom. The swirling blue light grew brighter, forming a colossal sphere of ice that shot towards Adrei. The dragon's fiery eyes widened in surprise, yet she did not flinch.

This is the final resolve of a man determined to die, and the dragon, with a heart of gold, understood that. Adrei knew she had to end this, not only for the sake of their kind, but for the man who had once saved her from the tyranny of her own lineage. With a roar that shook the very earth beneath them, her own breath shot out, a whirlwind of fire that met the icy sphere in a spectacle of nature's might.

The clash of fire and ice was a silent scream, for the celebration of a peace they never earned or deserved. The dragon's fiery breath met the icy sphere in a display of primal power that could shake the very heavens. The heat and cold fought in a dance of destruction, aged oaks around them cracking from the sudden change in temperature, begging the titans for mercy they would no longer grant.

The old huts fell under the pressured winds of the clash, the ice shattering into a million shards as the fire consumed the spell in a flash. In a moment, all of Demond's memories were released, frozen moments of joy and sorrow, love and loss, fluttering like snowflakes in the eye of the storm.

With the home that housed his daughter's memories gone, the spell of his last will shattered into oblivion, and now, the first and final staff, his symbol of friendship with his companion, reduced to splinters, Demond felt a sudden lightness, a weight lifted off his shoulders, as the fiery breath of the dragon neared him.

His last thought was of home, of his daughter, of his comrades that would greet him at the edge of the world. His hand leaned into his pocket, took out another cigarette, and light it with the tip of his finger. As his lips met the cigarette, his beard is now smeared with the tar of reality, a stark contrast to the gentle smile as he faced the dragon's fiery embrace.

This 𝓬ontent is taken from freeweɓnovel.cѳm.

"Ah...right, I promised her I would quit." The old mage chuckled to himself, as the last vestige of his past crumbled to ash around him.

And so the old mage met his end. Adrei watched in silent respect as the ice that had encased him melted away, revealing a man at peace, the cigarette still smoldering between his cackled lips. The dragon's fiery breath had consumed the last of his defenses, yet the warmth of the flames had not burned him to ash, but rather embraced him in a fiery embrace that whispered of redemption and rest.