Chapter 125: An Honorable Death is Preferable
She choked violently, her entire body convulsing under the torture. Her bloodshot eyes began to roll slightly in their sockets, consciousness slowly slipping from her asphyxiated mind. Her hands, once combative, now clung desperately to Belgaroth’s arm in a final attempt to alleviate the pressure on her trachea, her nails leaving bloody trails on the scaly skin that closed up almost immediately.
It was at that precise moment that Naesha, like a specter of vengeance, emerged from the shadows that seemed to have birthed her. Her movement was so fluid, so perfect, it seemed choreographed by Death itself. Her twin daggers, imbued with a toxic essence glimmering with violet hues, shimmered with a deadly light, tracing phosphorescent arcs through the tainted air. She descended upon the dragon with the precision of a peregrine falcon, her blades aimed at the junction between the skull and the spinal column that vulnerable spot even in the oldest of creatures.
Belgaroth didn’t even dignify the attack with a glance. With an indifference bordering on insult, he tilted his chin slightly, as if to better expose his powerful throat. A low growl rose from the depths of his being, vibrating at a frequency that made the very stone tremble. Then, without warning, a flame of dark violet erupted from his parted lips, like the muffled roar of a millennial volcano awakening from its slumber.
The infernal breath ignited the air in its path, transforming oxygen into incandescent poison. The flame, like a voracious hand, seized Naesha mid-flight, enveloping her in a burning embrace that denied any chance of escape. Her screams horrifying in their brevity were smothered by the wave of fire that consumed her with obscene voracity. Her body, once agile and lethal, turned black as obsidian in an instant, frozen in a contorted posture that testified to the agony of her final moments.
When she crashed to the ground, the sound was that of a charred branch snapping, dry and final, while acrid smoke wafted from her twisted limbs, carrying the unbearable stench of charred flesh to the nostrils of the survivors.
Isaac, prostrate on the ground in a pool of his own blood, watched the scene through the red haze that clouded his vision. Every breath was torture, a white-hot knife stabbing between his fractured ribs. The constant ringing that filled his ears made him feel submerged, drowning in an ocean of pain. His eyes, burning with a sickly fever, stung from the trauma he had endured, involuntary tears tracing clear paths through the dust and blood smeared across his face. His natural regeneration the grace that had saved him so many times fought desperately to knit his broken bones, to mend the torn tissues of his battered organs, but the process was agonizingly slow against the scale of the damage.
He blinked several times, trying in vain to dispel the fog that clouded his perception, but Belgaroth’s silhouette remained towering, unyielding, like a mountain of darkness that blocked out all light, all hope.
Through that miasma of suffering, he could make out the slender form of Akane, suspended like a macabre trophy by Belgaroth’s relentless grip. Her feet, which had long since stopped touching the ground, had ceased their desperate dance and now only swayed faintly. Her face, turned toward the ceiling, had taken on a cadaverous pallor that violently contrasted with her bloodshot eyes, where capillaries burst under the pressure. And yet, even in that agony, even on the threshold of unconsciousness, her gaze—that same gaze that had defied a dragon for decades sought out Isaac’s through the distance that separated them. A flicker still shone there, a blend of ultimate defiance and indomitable pride that refused to be extinguished.
- "You know..." began Belgaroth in a sickly sweet voice that obscenely contrasted with the violence of his actions, his fingers tightening until the delicate bones of Akane’s throat groaned under the pressure. "I could kill you right here and now, rip your head from your shoulders like one plucks a ripe fruit. But that would be so... unsatisfying."