Eleonor quickly followed Victor out of the building and looked half-aware of her surroundings. Eventually, she blinked and shook her head slightly, leaving her reverie. She sped up and walked beside Victor, looking up at him from the side and cocked her head.
"Does that happen often?" She asked. Victor nodded as he closed his eyes.
"They got their hands on a pair of adventurers not long ago as well. I imagine they ran off with their coin, too." He looked down at her. "Don't become like that."
"OBVIOUSLY!" She loudly replied, on the verge of yelling. At the same time, she managed to grab the attention of those on the street as well. Victor hadn't cared and continued onwards, walking to the Lord's castle. Shooing her off to buy stuff she believed they would need, something he was apprehensive about, he waited until she was out of sight before he began walking towards the mansion.
Arriving at the mansion gates and walking past the guards without care, they baulked at his brazen attitude before remembering their jobs.
They tried to halt him, but the moment their weapons got within an inch of his body, they wood snapped. With some angry bubble within Victor popping, flames coiled around their spears and into their arms. Their screaming, which likely would have alerted the entire city, were silenced as Victor landed a punch into one of their chests, shattering three ribs, and grabbing the shattered spear and thrusting it into the other guard's throat. He had had enough of Bern's attitude. The entire time he'd been doing jobs for him, he had treated him, Victor, a dragon, with such disrespect.
He would have it no longer.
The guard's bodies behind him slowly burnt out and turned to ash quickly, the scent of crispy meat and burning flesh subdued and slowly dissipating.
Walking forward, Victor looked to the window he'd seen Bern from when he came back here with Eleonor and found he wasn't there. No matter. He thought. I'll turn the place inside out to get what I want. All of it is for my kin. He repeated in his head like a mantra.
Guards. Guards. Guards and even more guards. If Victor didn't know better, he'd think that Bern was summoning these men from another plane.
Steel blades, pikes, and halberds all moved towards him. Yet, he felt oddly calm.
A thrust from a pike had him bash his wrist against the wooden pole. With a snap, it broke in half and fell to the floor. A sword came behind him and a halberd from his side; grabbing the one that had the first pike, he threw them into the Halberd and ducked -- leaping back and throwing his head into the sword wielder's chin with a crack.
Grabbing the sword handle, he twisted the man's wrist and threw the blade into their thigh, making him scream, only to be silenced by a hand over his mouth. Victor looked down at him, eyes shimmering as blood coated his cheek. Fire. Burning. Smoke billowing from the poor mans face. And finally, a melting sensation, similar to chocolate dripping down his hand. Throwing him to the side, Victor dropped to the ground and rolled, a halberd, coated in blood, stabbed the floor next to him. It's owner looked both terrified and furious.
He spun around on the puddle of blood slowly forming beneath him and kicked the pole. The wielder of the weapon stumbled forward, falling face-first into the weapon's broken shaft.
Sighing, Victor stood up and looked at himself. Bern had expected him to return. He knew Victor's methods by now. But, as Bern knew his tactics, Victor knew Berns to a much deeper degree. A maid who hadn't gotten the memo stepped into the room and dropped the blankets, just recently cleaned, onto the stairs with a scream. She turned and ran, and thankfully, he let her go. She didn't do anything after all.
Then again, these sods were only doing their job. That thought crossed his mind as he kicked one of their bodies. It was there for a long moment. But then Victor returned to his purpose for being here. He grabbed the sword from the one man's thigh with a wet, sickening sound as blood coated the tip of the blade and soaked the floor. Sighing, they walked up the stairs, following where the maid went. Looking at the doors on either side of the hallway, he tried to get a good grip on the sword, fiddling with it as he walked through the halls.
With a sudden halt to his steps, Victor took a whiff of the air. Fire. Smoke. Fear. Confusion. Rage. Confidence? His eyes opened to the sight of a man in front of him.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The man was wearing an ornate set of armour and wielded an equally grandiose sword in his hands. It left Victor at a loss for words. Then he took a look at the details as the man got into his stance, and Victor instantly was incensed. A boiling, seething rage coursed through his veins as he stared at the man.
Dragon scales. Then he looked at the sword. A familiar sword. The one that Eleonor's failure of a knight had. So, he fought in the war. Victor took a deep breath. The man whom he had started to realize was Jurian pointed the tip of the blade at him.
"You've revealed yourself, DEMON!" He yelled. Victor, uncaring, studied his blade, not bothering to listen to Jurian's attempt at provocation. He saw the sword- it was nothing spectacular, a piece of iron, detailed and nothing more. However, he took great fury at the scales on the hilt and guard, something he hadn't noticed before.
He killed our young. He took a whiff as his body glew a bright golden light. Far too many of them are young. There was no armour after his body stopped glowing- he calmed himself down enough that it didn't appear. Instead, he exhaled. Nothing fanciful, nothing exaggerated, he merely breathed.
And then he began to walk. Forward. Slowly. His feet carried him to all that there was in his consciousness. The bright-armoured knight, no longer shaking in his boots simply because he looked at Victor, yelled something at him as he charged at him. Victor didn't hear it. All he knew was that his hands were flying, and his sword left his hand. There was a clatter, and the steps didn't stop - no, that wasn't right.
Jurian's legs had stopped moving. He was no longer moving by himself, but rather, he was tumbling on his side. Victor stepped forward and looked at his body.
The sword that Victor had thrown was so fast that it broke past the helmet's visor and through the back of the helmet, the metal still glowing a light orange from the heat.
In a fit of anger, he pulled the sword up and out, and with several heavy grunts, stomped down. Down. Down.
"You kill our children. You drive us to the brink! You forget who protected your kind for millennia!" He yelled at the body, waiting for a response that wouldn't come. "You turn us into weapons to use against our own!" A puddle of viscera remained where the knight's head had once been, grey matter and broken bones and flesh where there was once a face. After a whole minute of his rage emptying into the floor and mush, he took a deep breath.
It's an empire of child killers, hunters, disgusting, vile, wretched humans. I will burn this country to the ground. I will raze your fields, slaughter your cattle, "I will devour your king, I will summon my kin back from our mountains, and I will stand upon the throne of your corpses." He stripped down Jurian of his armour, looking at the scales on it. Propping it up against the wall, he spoke quietly. "I will avenge you and your children. I will allow you all a rest in the mountains of your birth with the highest honour." Victor stood, staring at the armour Victor had set on the same wall, and turned away.
Walking through hall after hall, anger flooding his body as his steps left a fiery trail in his wake, singeing the carpet, it took little more than three minutes of his walking before he finally found Bern's bedroom and resisted the urge to punch through the door.
With a crash, he decided to kick it down instead. Bern screamed and bared a sword to him.
"Stay back! Back!" Wine stained his white shirt and, by the scent of the room, had likely tried to enjoy life in a smug bliss. "What do you wan-"
"Coin, armour, clothing, a carriage with horses, rations, a sword, and a shield." He replied without a hint of hesitation, and Bern looked almost confused. Almost.
"F-Fine! T-The treasury is in-n the basement, the left room at the far end of the hall! The armoury is on the right- Carriages and horses are behind the mansion! PLEASE don't kill me!" he begged. Victor almost felt pity for him, with his display of absolutely disgusting willingness to pass on the lives of his subordinates.
"Unfortunately, I don't plan on leaving anyone in your empire alive. I spared the maids and butlers for now because they hadn't done anything. But your empire is wrought with evil. I will burn it all to the ground, in time."
And, with that, he stomped down onto Bern's stomach. His foot slowly crashing down into him and draining the colour from his face as he looked down and saw a foot inside of his body. Choking out something, Victor kicked him away and off his foot.
Good thing I'm wearing boots. They thought, soon walking to Bern's writhing body and taking off his, donning them for himself.