The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 504: Fear

And yet," Vetra countered, lunging forward to snap her jaws inches from his face, "here you stand, using every lesson I beat into your hide. You are my greatest work, Soren. You cannot kill your creator with her own tools."

The poison in her words was more effective than her claws. Soren felt the truth of it gnawing at his focus. He was using her forms, her strikes, her discipline. Even now, he was her shadow.

He pivoted as an elder Syvrak exhaled a plume of molten orange at his flank. With a flick of his wrist, Soren summoned a wall of ice twenty feet high and ten feet thick.

The collision was a violent explosion of steam, but the wall held. Without missing a beat, he sent a wave of frost snaking along the ground, catching the creature’s tail and anchoring it to the floor.

Another behemoth charged, its weight shaking the foundations of the palace.

Soren didn’t dodge. He waited until the last possible second, then turned the floor beneath the creature into frictionless ice.

The Syvrak’s momentum betrayed it; it slid past him like a runaway sled. As it passed, Soren summoned a blade of hardened ice in his hand, slashing a deep, jagged gash across its stone-scaled flank.

Three more closed in, flanking him from the rear and sides.

Soren dropped into a low crouch, pulling the ambient moisture of the hall into himself for a heartbeat before releasing it in a massive, expanding sphere of freezing death.

The ice burst threw the creatures back, coating them in a layer of immobilizing rime, but even as they fell, more were taking their place.

He was wearing down. His breathing was heavy, and a fine sheen of cold sweat stood out against his blue tattoos.

Then, the air changed.

A searing, golden light cut through the freezing fog of the hall as Eris entered the fray. The fire in her hands was so bright it cast long, dancing shadows against the far walls. The effect was instantaneous.

The Syvrak didn’t just see her; they felt her.

Inside Eris, Pyronox was no longer pacing; he was roaring. The ancient dragon’s hatred for the Syvrak was a physical pressure against her ribs, a hunger for the hunt that made her blood feel like molten lead.

The seal on her chest hummed at a frequency that made the very air vibrate, warning her of the strain, but Eris ignored it.

The horde shifted. Heads turned. Dozens of glowing, predatory eyes moved away from Soren and toward the woman who carried their ancient enemy.

They didn’t see an Empress; they saw a feast. They saw the golden prize they had been bred to consume.

Eris stood her ground, her eyes meeting Soren’s across the sea of monsters. The fire and the frost moved toward one another, two halves of a storm finally reuniting.

"Eris, get back!" Soren shouted, though his voice lacked its usual command, replaced by a raw, terrified concern.

"Not a chance," Eris replied, the fire in her palms flaring until the marble beneath her feet began to glow. "The old man inside me wants to play, and I think your mother needs a lesson in the consequences of playing with fire."

The Syvrak hissed in unison, a sound that set Eris’s teeth on edge. The divide was over. The hunt had truly begun.

Eris didn’t wait for an invitation. She moved with the fluid, scorching grace of a wildfire, her boots skidding over the frost-slicked marble as she closed the distance toward Soren’s position.

The air around her was a shimmering distortion of heat, and as she ran, she gathered the golden-white energy of Pyronox into her palms, weaving it into a concentrated sphere of kinetic flame.

One of the mid-sized Syvrak, a spindly, insectoid nightmare with scales like charred color was lunging for Soren’s exposed flank while he parried a strike from Vetra.

Eris unleashed the blast. The fire didn’t just hit; it detonated against the creature’s ribs, the concussive force sending it skidding twenty feet across the hall in a spray of sparks and screeching agony.

The creature recoiled, Its multi-faceted eyes snapping toward the new threat. It hissed, a sound like steam escaping a ruptured pipe, and began to slink toward Eris, its focus entirely redirected.

Eris fell into a fighting stance, keeping her distance from Soren but remaining within supporting range. She was the anvil to his hammer, or at least, she intended to be.

But the cost was immediate. With that single, high-output attack, the seal on Eris’s chest burned white-hot. She felt a sickening, jagged sensation... a literal physical parting of skin and spirit.

The fracture lines in the glowing mark on her sternum widened, spider-webbing further across her skin. It felt as if her ribs were being pried apart by an invisible crowbar.

She gasped, her hand flying to her chest as the sharp, blinding pain flared. Not yet, she hissed internally, the realization settling in like a stone in her gut.

She couldn’t use her full strength. If she pushed for the kind of inferno required to thin this horde, the seal would shatter, and Pyronox would use her as a doorway.

She was a weapon with a cracked barrel, dangerous to her enemies but lethal to herself.

Soren saw it. Even in the chaos of parrying Vetra’s massive obsidian claws, his vertical sapphire pupils caught the flare of the seal through the fabric of Eris’s dress. He saw her stumble, saw the way she clutched at her heart, and a primal, suffocating terror eclipsed his tactical mind.

No. Not here. Not like this.

His worst nightmare wasn’t the Syvrak; it was the day the dragon finally finished consuming the woman he loved.

The sight of her endangering herself triggered a surge of misplaced, defensive rage. He couldn’t protect the Empire, he couldn’t protect his throne, so he lashed out at the only thing he had left to lose.

"Eris!" Soren’s shout was a thunderclap that momentarily silenced the screeching of the monsters.