The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 505: Trouble in paradise

It was harsh, jagged, and dripping with an anger born of sheer fright. "Stop! Get back!"

Eris paused mid-gesture, her hands still wreathed in flickering gold. She looked at him, her brow furrowed in genuine confusion.

Soren slammed his palm into the ground, summoning a jagged wall of ice between them and the advancing Syvrak, buying a momentary, frozen respite.

"I can handle this!" he barked, his voice hard as the permafrost. "I can handle this by myself! Find somewhere safe... get to the tower. You shouldn’t be here!"

The rejection hit Eris harder than any physical blow. The hurt flashed briefly in her eyes before being incinerated by an insulted fury. She gestured wildly at the dozens of creatures crawling over the walls, their glowing eyes fixed on the Emperor.

"You can’t handle this alone, Soren! Look at them! There are dozens, and you’re already surrounded!"

"I said go!" Soren turned his back on her, re-engaging a Syvrak that was trying to climb over his barrier. The dismissal was absolute.

"I’m not going anywhere!" Eris screamed, her fire flaring in direct response to her rising temper.

Soren glanced back over his shoulder, his elongated pupils glowing with a dangerous, inhuman light.

He pointed a trembling, gauntleted finger at her chest. "Your seal is cracking, Eris! I can see the light through your skin! You’ll lose control—you’ll let that bastard out!" 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"I can manage it—"

"No, you can’t!" Soren’s jaw clenched, his voice rising to match her volume. "Every time you use that power, you risk everything! You risk us! I won’t watch the dragon tear you apart because you’re too stubborn to retreat!"

The familiar pain of their old argument bloomed between them like a weed. Eris understood his fear; she felt the weight of it in the way he looked at her. But she hated the paralysis it demanded of her.

"So I should stand aside?" she challenged, her voice trembling with frustration. "I should sit in a pretty tower and watch you die? Is that the plan, Soren? You’ll be a martyr and I’ll be safe and widowed?"

"I won’t die," Soren growled, his pride flaring even as he leaned into the strain of his current magic.

Eris made a broad, sarcastic gesture at the sea of monsters closing in. "You sure about that? Because the math looks a little grim from where I’m standing."

The argument cost them. Distracted by the heat of their own conflict, Soren didn’t see Vetra’s massive tail sweeping through the air like a falling redwood.

Eris reacted instinctively, her body moving before her mind could process the danger.

She unleashed a focused fire blast at the creature’s face, the heat forcing Vetra to recoil and miss her mark by a fraction of an inch.

Vetra laughed... a wet, grinding sound that filled the hall. "Trouble in paradise, my beautiful weapon?" she mocked, her serpent eyes darting between the two of them. "How fitting that your little spark is the one who will eventually extinguish you."

Soren didn’t answer. He dove back into the fray, but his movements were becoming sluggish. He pushed for the next stage of his transformation, reaching for the absolute zero that should have been his birthright, but the barrier remained.

Perhaps his own stress, his anger at Eris, and his suffocating fear were acting as a magical dam. He was sabotaging his own flow, his heart too heavy with human emotion to achieve the cold purity of the Ice-Born.

Vetra saw it. She relished it. "I made you untouchable," she hissed, swiping a claw that Soren barely parried with an ice shield. "I made you invincible. You were perfect... until her. She made you weak, Soren. She gave you something to fear."

Soren’s rage exploded in a massive, undisciplined burst of frost that shattered a nearby pillar, but Vetra simply dodged, her smile widening. She had hit the nerve.

On the other side of the hall, three Syvrak broke away from the main group. They didn’t slither; they marched. They were hunting.

Eris stood her ground, her fire ready, her eyes narrowing as she realized they weren’t interested in the Emperor anymore. They sensed the Flameborn. They sensed the ancient grudge of Pyronox vibrating in her very bones.

The largest of the three—a sixty-foot elder covered in scars from a war fought before the first Empire was even a dream—stopped ten feet from her. He was one of the serpents who fought with Pyronox and survied. His scales glowed like cooling embers.

"We sense him," the Elder spoke, his voice a deep, resonant rumble that seemed to vibrate in Eris’s teeth. "The Flameborn. Hiding within a coward’s vessel. A fragile skin to house a king of ash."

"Release him," the Elder commanded, his neck coiling like a spring. "As you did in the ruins of the south. Let him face us as a dragon should. Let us finish the war your ancestors started."

Eris looked the monster in the eye, her expression settling into a mask of cold determination. "No."

"If you’re here to find him," she said, her voice clear and carrying over the din, "I’m sorry. But you’ve come at the wrong time. Because I’m not letting him out. Not today. Not for you." She gave a small, chillingly confident smile. "You’ve wasted your time."

The Elder laughed, a deep rumble of genuine amusement. "Brave words from a fragile human about to break. I can see your seal, girl. It is a thin door." He coiled tighter, his eyes gleaming with a predatory light. "We can wait for him to emerge over your corpse. Or... we can help break you open."

He didn’t finish the sentence. He lunged.

The Elder moved with a lightning speed that defied his massive size. One moment he was still; the next, he was a blurred mass of scales and teeth.

His jaws opened wide, revealing rows of obsidian blades designed to rend dragon-flesh. Eris had no time to shout, no time to look at Soren. She barely had time to breathe as the darkness of the beast’s maw descended upon her.