The War God’s Favorite novel Chapter 133

#133 The Silence
The Black Dragon and the other creature had interrupted their fight, surprised by the sudden collapse of a part of the arena. For a long while, the bricks and rocks collapsed, more and more of the structure attracted to the fall. Soon enough, an impressive portion of the arena was wrecked open, some cells even open to the sky. Both dragons stared at the little mountain of rocks, and had to blink several times, annoyed by the clouds of dust that exhaled from it. Once it was over though, a long silence followed. For a while, nothing moved in the arena.
Krai softly growled, as if to call her. Next to him, the creature retreated back. Its sibling was already lying dead in the dust a few steps away, it’s rib cage exposed to the air. The fight had been horrible, the difference in strength showing off. Two of them hadn’t been enough to fight the War God’s Dragon. This little one wasn’t sure what to do. It glanced at Krai, and retreated slowly, limping heavily on its injured leg. It seemed like the black dragon didn’t care for their fight anymore. No, Krai was focused on the pile of rocks.
He slowly stepped forward, despite a painful and limping leg. He growled again, calling. Nothing moved for a while.
Then, the mountain suddenly rose, even bigger, and rocks rolled off to the ground. Blue scales starting appearing out of the mess. Sire struggled to get out of there. The dragon was injured and stumbled several times before he could get his body out of the rubble. Krai walked up to him, and both dragons briefly sniffed each other. Both dragon siblings were in a pitiful state. Krai had large injuries from his fight, covered in both his own blood and those of the dragons he had to fight today. So much, his black scales were shining with a lustrous red under the sun. Sire was covered in dust, but his body had been mauled in several places by the rocks, some of his scales had even fallen off or been damaged. His shoulder couldn’t seem to bear the weight of his body, his paw kept giving away at each step he took to get away from the mess.
Just then, Sire suddenly turned its head towards the misshapen dragon left behind. The blue Dragon suddenly growled, his eyes shining of a murderous look. He started walking, growling furiously. As the larger dragon headed its way, the ugly creature tried to retreat, struggling against its injury to step back. It had lost all of its intent to fight, the panic could be seen in its eyes as Sire came closer, growling furiously. The blue dragon, despite its injury and damaged scales, was in much better shape than Krai, and angrier too. The battle was about to end in a very quick way…
Meanwhile, Krai didn’t even look at that massacre. His ears barely twitched, no matter how loud the younger dragon’s screeches were. The black dragon kept staring at the rubble, like frozen in front of the pile of rocks. He didn’t move, he was waiting, his ruby eyes looking over as if to look for something.
He growled again, softly. With his snout, pushed a bit the rocks, sniffing around to find her. He lifted his injured paw, starting to dig and move the rocks around. He was like a dog, looking through the pile, searching desperately. Behind him, Sire, done with his bloody work, watched him without moving.
“Krai!”
The black dragon didn’t turn heads. He kept digging, his movements getting more impatient. His claws were not done for such a task, and he growled in frustration every time he ripped off a rock.
“Krai!”
Kairen was confused. What was his dragon doing?
The War God stepped forward, ignoring the pain. He was covered in black scales. His chest was bare and covered in scales and blood. A large portion of his face, too, was invaded with black scales, where the flesh was slowly recovering from the deep burn. One couldn’t even distinguish the injuries anymore, his body looked like it was half-way some mythic transformation.
A wave of worry started invading his heart. His eyes glanced over the dead dragons near to Sire, but he just took the information in. He was more focused on Krai, digging helplessly through a mountain of garbage.
Kairen started running. Panic was invading his senses. He threw the dragon’s head he was carrying, and just ran, as fast as he could, across the Arena. He had a bad feeling. He never had one of those things called intuition, but Krai’s desperation was getting to his head like a horrible snake carving a fear. He didn’t allow himself to think. Kairen ran until he arrived in front of the pile. Then, he started digging too. 3
For a while, there were no other sounds than those two, the Prince and his dragon, endlessly looking through a mountain of rocks, digging each way they could. They were looking so frantically, their breathing, and the ruckus they made was the only thing to be heard in the stadium. Sire, standing a few steps away, was looking at them with a quiet attitude.
“…What are they doing…?”
The blue Dragon turned its head to look at her. Stumbling at one of the Arena’s entrance, Shareen was frowning with a grimace, in bad shape too. A large and deep injury was running from her left temple down to her jaw, still bleeding a bit, yet slightly covered by dark purple little scales. Her ear was cut open too on the same side and kept blinking because of the scales covering another cut on her eyebrow.
The top of her armor was gone, her shoulder exposed with another large injury on it, a clear gigantic bite mark that still bled down her sides. Her purple outfit was now drenched in a reddish color, and she was just walking slowly as if taking one step after another had been painful. She was holding her wrist against her flank, her hand gone.
She came closer, unable to understand what her brother and his dragon were doing.
They just kept digging, looking for a sign, a movement, anything.
“Cassandra!” Suddenly yelled Kairen, unable to retain it anymore.
His voice echoed along with the arena, and Shareen’s face sunk.
“She can’t be under… that…” She muttered.
ttered.
The Princess hurried up to her brother’s side, and though she didn’t want to know what they were going to find, she started digging too, though it was slow progress. Sire looked at them as if they were crazy.
“Cassandra! Cassandra!”
The War God’s voice echoed his Dragon’s growls. They kept rummaging through the rock in silence of death. Shareen didn’t want to say those words, but she knew there was just no way.
Anything under this rubble couldn’t have survived this.
“Cassandra!”
She swallowed it and kept going. Rock after rock, they kept digging, hurting their fingers and breaking nails and claws until they bleed more. Suddenly, after pulling an umpteenth rock, Shareen saw it. A bit of white skin.
“K… Kairen…’ She muttered.
Her brother didn’t hear her. Shareen took a deep breath, closing her eyes to hold it in.
“Kairen!”
This time, he turned around and seeing her expression, his heart sunk. The War God ran down the little uphill he was standing at two seconds before. His eyes opened wide upon seeing what she had seen.
“Cassandra!”
Shareen stepped away a bit, letting him uncover his lover. It was an arm that came first. She was covered in so many stones, it took a few more seconds to dig her out, even with Krai’s help. The Dragon was so agitated, the rocks under him threatened to collapse again. When Kairen finally pulled Cassandra out, he lost all of his breath.
She wasn’t moving.
Her eyes closed, she lied in his arms like an inanimate doll. Her white skin was covered in bruises, and her left leg was making a horrible angle, her feet lying at the end like it was just barely hung there. A layer of dust was
covering her skin, her hair as if she had been part of the stone itself. 8
The War God gasped, unable to admit what he was seeing, what he was holding on to. Something that he just couldn’t see was right under his eyes. His hands were shaking under Cassandra’s body. It had never shaken before.
“Cassandra,” he called. “Cassandra, wake up.”
Shareen bit her lip, unable to say anything, not even tell him to stop.
The young concubine looked beautiful, even in that state. Some of her hair was glued to her temple by the blood on her face. It had run all over her face, her lips tinted with some vermeil. Yet, her skin had never seemed so grey. She had never seemed so petite and thin, in the War God’s arms.
“No,” he said. “No, Cassandra, no.”
There was anger in his voice. As if he was ordering her not too. As if he was ordering them not to take her. Krai wasn’t making a sound. The dragon was crouching down, approaching with very little steps, as if he was… scared. He was sniffing Cassandra’s hand, lying on the ground, and slowly, he started retreating, with a wailing sound.
Shareen had to look away, she couldn’t take it anymore. It was painful to hear him, to hear them call her, again, and again, again, like a mad man. She couldn’t utter a word. If she did, she would have broken too. She was a strong woman, few things could shake her. This was one of those things. Cassandra, and Kairen breaking down. They were used to death, they had always been. But this was even sadder. Even more unbearable. This wasn’t possible to accept, not like that.
As she was looking away, Shareen’s eyes caught sight of something. A movement, underneath the pile of rocks. She frowned and walked towards that. As she came closer, a sound came with it, like a groaning of some injured beast.
“Oh, by the gods…” she hissed.
She pushed a couple of rocks with her feet, and sure enough, a black eye came through. He was moving, but those were merely tremors. The second Prince was groaning, pinned under a mountain of rocks. He didn’t look anything human anymore, his body crushed under the weight. His dragon blood was probably just doing whatever it could, on the inside and the outside.
Shareen didn’t even have enough in her to grin at his pitiful situation.
“Even the gods don’t think you deserve an easy death,” she muttered.
Slowly, she took off one rock after another, until his head was completely stuck out. His skull had been crushed, his head in an odd shape that had nothing round. Yet, the red scales were appearing here and there. Shareen grabbed a rock that was about half her hand’s size, weighted it a bit in her hand, and turned to him again. She approached her face to him.
“She killed you,” she whispered. “…You’re going to die knowing that a slave woman beat you, and another woman finished the job. You tell the gods if they dare send you back here again, I’ll kill you over and over again, just like the damn cockroach you are, in any life.”
Then, she raised the rock and smashed it on his face.
She raised it again and smiled with satisfaction. Then, she smashed it again. Just once wasn’t enough. She had chosen a flat and not too heavy one on purpose. Shareen hit him again, again and over again, looking in his eye each time she raised it, putting all the violence she could in each hit. His dragon blood could try to keep up, she’d keep going. There was so much needed to be thrown into his face. All the suffering he deserved, everything, it
came from her hand, from that rock. The blood splattered around, on her hand, on her body, on her face. Her grip didn’t lessen around the rock, no matter how it hurt to kept hitting. With each groan of suffering he uttered, she found a bit of relief, some justice was done to those who had died.
Shareen wanted to be sure he saw it, he died with this vision, knowing he had truly lost. She kept smashing his face, again and again, until nothing but a blood crater was left. Only then, did her shaking hand let go of the rock. It fell down, going down with a lonely sound on the ground.
Just then, the Princess let out a long sigh of relief. She didn’t say a word, but for a second, she thought about her siblings, her brother, her nieces, and nephews. Then, Shareen grabbed the body, and with her last bit of strength, she took it out of that graveyard, throwing it on the ground. Krai and Sire both.growled furiously, but before they could react, Shareen took a deep breath, and suddenly, she spat out fire. The corpse started burning immediately.
That bastard didn’t deserve anything to remain in this world.