POV ???.:
A long wooden table in the middle of a large chamber was brimming with food and drinks.
The room was brightly lit, with crystals growing on the chandelier hanging from a tall vaulted ceiling and the light passing through large vitrage windows.
All of the seats were vacant except for two. A tall blonde man in a silver embroidered doublet was sitting in one chair, loudly slurping from a chalice, the wine flowing down his chin.
He put down the chalice and grinned towards the second occupant, “Why do I feel like you don’t want to see me? I travelled for weeks just to visit you.”
A young woman with long black hair wearing an eye-catchy red dress with golden flowers embroidered on it glared back at him and spoke with palpable disdain, “I know it is your work! So don’t try to look so innocent!”
“My?! Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I want to hurt you, Tanya? I love you.”
“I already told you I don’t want you!”
The man shook his head, stabbed a large sausage from his plate on a fork, and gobbled it down.
“You will come back to me with tears! Everything around you is slowly crumbling. Just say yes, and I can fix it all.”
Suddenly the air turned heavier, and the room’s light slightly dimmed. Tanya looked straight at him, glaring into his eyes, her hand hovering slightly above a knife.
Shivers immediately ran down his body, just from these eyes. They were not the eyes of an innocent girl but the eyes of a cold-blooded murderer.
He felt small and wanted to crawl under the table, his instincts warning him of danger.
‘Nonsense, why am I so scared!’
His aura immediately burst out, all of the utensils on the table rattling and trembling. The lights started to flicker, and the glass panes in the large vitrage windows began to ring.
His fear disappeared, replaced by excitement, “Ohh, this is what I always loved about you! You are sick in your head, and I love it! All other girls just care about boring stuff like embroidery, but you? I can feel it. You just want to stab me!”
POV Vesuvius:
The dragon was flapping his wings, flying high in the starry black sky, his smoke-covered body blending with the background. His eyes were set upon a distant collum of smoke, the words of the wyrm still resounding in his head.
“Go Vesuvius and obtain the territory that will help you grow. There is a volcano to the north. However, it is the territory of someone! Go and take it for yourself! You will need it for your growth.”
‘They are right, I am a volcano dragon from a major part, and I need a proper habitat to live. I will redirect my kobolds here. This will be the future capital of my new kingdom.’
He flapped his wings, his body accelerating and turning into a rocket as he blasted towards the distant hill. He could already feel his powers growing. He felt like he was returning home with his heart seeping with comfort.
There wasn’t even a bit of fear towards the current owner of the volcano, ‘I rule over volcanoes. Whoever lives there will either bend before me or perish.’
The tall rocky mound grew more prominent as he kept getting closer. It was high, and its rough rocky cliffs stood above verdant green valleys fertilised by volcanic ash and heat from magma flowing under the ground.
A collum of black smoke was rising towards the sky. Everything was quiet, with no birds around, as if everyone was scared of some horrible predator.
‘I wonder whose territory this is?’
Suddenly the ground rumbled, something moving under the earth. It moved fast. All of the trees in the valley trembled. It was quickly closing towards the dragon, with everything around shaking.
The earth cracked open, magma and stone flying in all directions as a massive scale-covered monster burst from the depths of the earth.
It slithered out, its long hose-like, snake body straightening towards the sky with magma flowing down its scales.
Its short horns decorating its head were glowing from the heat, with its two snake eyes looking straight at the dragon.
Its body was massive, as long as two buses in a line.
The moment the two eyes fell upon the dragon, he immediately realised it was ‘A basilisk, some volcanic variant.’
The dragon immediately opened his mouth, and a blue light flashed inside of them with doubled square split into three, forming in, followed by a four-pointed star.
Mana flowed in, and then a thick blue beam of concentrated fire erupted out, rushing towards the ground, the bright light radiating out of it illuminating the whole night-covered valley.
The basilisk hissed, with poison and magma flying out of its mouth. In a panic, it retracted its head back to the hole, leaving behind only a gaping hole glowing in the orange light of a molten stone.
The beam smashed into the hole just a split second later, the whole ground shaking with everything around it evaporating.
The beam kept burning and melting, drilling into the ground like a thermal drill, with molten stone splashing all around it.
The ground rumbled even louder, with cracks spreading all around the trees falling down as the ground started to split apart with more and more giant snake-like monsters slithering out of it.
𝒪𝓥xt.𝑶
‘Not one basilisk. There is a whole colony of them! How? What are they even feeding on?’ Vesuvius scanned the ground under him, and then all of the snakes opened their mouths, filled with multiple lines of sharp pointy teeth with poison dripping out of them.
Their whole bodies contorted and then straightened up, their muscles launching spits of steaming yellow goo towards the dragon.
They whistled through the air at an immense speed, like projectiles launched out of a tank.
Before he could even flap his wings, the toxic goo hit him all over his massive body and splashed everywhere.
As if the goo was alive, it spread around his whole body, sticking to his armour and loudly hissing, slowly melting through his defences.
He wanted to retaliate, but his wings felt stern and heavy. The goo slowly transformed into a layer of ugly yellowy stone, paralysing his joints as if someone sprayed him with quick-drying concrete.
He started to feel hazy with the vapours from the toxins entering his nostrils.
The yellowy stone started to spread around like a fungus, devouring his whole body.
He looked at them with hate, his eyes shining so brightly that the light passed even through the thick clouds of smoke around him.