Chapter 544: Scathach (Part. II)
“Come here, you son of a bitch. Don’t you dare control my mother.”
The words fell like hammer blows in the forgotten corridors of the temple.
It was more than a threat.
It was a divine declaration.
The air around them vibrated with silent fury. Tiamat and Ouroboros felt it immediately—the call of the bloodline, the echo of the first Dragon. Scarlet froze for a second, watching Strax as if she saw something that was no longer just Strax.
His aura was different now.
Distorted.
Greater.
Older.
Scathach tried to react, but her sword… hesitated. The blade trembled in her hand as if it recognized the blood of the one who now faced her.
“You’re in there,” Strax said, his eyes fixed on hers. “I know you are. You don’t know me. But I know you. I know the feeling of you. I am your son.”
His voice faltered. Just for a second. A thread of emotion tore through the shield of fury that surrounded him.
“I needed you. When I was little. When I lived through hell in Vorah, when I was sent to the mines, when everyone turned against me. I needed you!”
Scathach’s pupils dilated. Her green eyes flashed. Her sword trembled.
But then… something inside her tore through the moment.
A shadow.
Literal, like living smoke, it crept behind her neck. It formed eyes. A smile. Tentacles of dark energy snaked across her back, penetrating her spine, her neck, her skull.
And she screamed.
Not in pain.
In resistance.
Strax felt his hand being taken over by corrupt energy—but he didn’t let go.
On the contrary. He squeezed harder, as if his soul could pull her back to the surface.
“Mother, I’ve heard things about you. I know you’re not some weakling who can be easily controlled!”
The kick was like a living wall suddenly rising up.
Scathach, with an explosion of tremendous strength, raised her knee and struck Strax’s stomach with supernatural precision. The impact reverberated like thunder. Strax’s bones cracked, his breath was knocked from his chest in a single brutal second, and he flew like a flaming arrow of flesh.
“NGHHHAAAAAARGH!”
His body cut through the air and hurtled toward the chamber wall like a projectile. But before he collided with the incandescent rock, Ouroboros appeared, the energy serpents on her arm undulating rapidly. She held him tightly, digging her heels into the ground to contain the inertia of the impact. Even so, they were both dragged for meters, the ground scratched by the dragon’s metal claws, until they stopped inches from a lava abyss.
The ground was still shaking.
Strax coughed up blood, his body curled up on itself. Ouroboros steadied him with both arms and looked at him, her eyes wide with shock and pain.
“You’re crazy,” she said, her voice tense. “You were going to die…”
Strax raised his eyes. And even bleeding, even with his skin torn and his armor in tatters, he smiled.
“If it’s for her… then it’s worth it.”
And then they both looked at the center of the chamber.
There, Scathach still hovered—but something terribly wrong was happening.
Her body trembled as if held back by something impossible to hold. The runes on her skin pulsed with scarlet and black light. Black veins, like marks of poison, ran up her neck, arms, legs. Her green eyes flickered between their natural color and a burnt red, each blink a conflict of souls.
Scarlet stared, in a fighting stance, but did not attack. She could feel it. The change.
Scathach then turned to her.
And smiled.
“You are interesting,” she said, her voice sounding like two voices in one, overlapping, unnatural.
“You said that the Dragon’s blood should not be used lightly…”
Scarlet took a step forward. “No…”
But it was too late.
Scathach’s body began to fall apart.
Not like someone dying, but like something… revealing itself.
The skin split into lines, not bleeding, but giving way to deep black scales with an opaque, sinister sheen. Bones lengthened with nauseating cracks. Wings emerged in a burst of flesh and power, like daggers piercing reality. The tail snaked behind her, cracking against the ground like a steel whip.
A scream—the scream of a dragon—echoed throughout the volcano, reverberating through the chambers and corridors, cracking the walls as if each note were a curse. The skies above the temple suddenly darkened, even inside the crater.
Scathach had transformed.
It was not just a dragon.
It was an ancient monster, something that should never have returned.
Black and red scales covered her body. Her eyes, now completely reptilian, glowed with pure corruption. She had the shape of a dragon, but something about her outline was… wrong. As if the very concept of form was being challenged.
And then… she began to destroy.
With a deafening roar, she spat out a burst of purple energy that swept across half the chamber. Magma rose in unstable columns, the ceiling exploded in flames, and rocks began to fall in colossal blocks.
Tiamat screamed, pulling several soldiers away with a magical chain.
Ouroboros fell to his knees, shielding Strax with his body as debris rained down like meteors.
Scarlet… did not move.
She remained staring at the dragon, motionless, her eyes overflowing with pain.
“Scathach…” she whispered. “What did he do to you…?”
The creature roared again and spiraled down, striking the ground with its claws and opening a huge crack in the center of the temple. Ancient rocks shattered on impact. The runic columns broke apart. Unstable energy escaped from the volcano’s core.
They were about to be swallowed up.
Strax rose with a jolt, even as his muscles protested, even as blood spurted from his reopened wounds.
“She’s trapped inside,” he said, looking at Scarlet. “You saw it. I saw it.”
Scarlet closed her eyes for a moment. She took a deep breath. And then the flame inside her ignited again.
“Then let’s free her. Even if it kills us.”
Strax smiled, though he could barely stand. “Good. I needed a little adrenaline.”
And then, together, they advanced.
The dragon that had once been Scathach took flight with the fury of a primordial storm. Her black wings, colossal in span, opened with a thunderous crack, as if tearing through the very fabric of the volcanic chamber’s sky. Each beat displaced the air violently, scattering embers and magical dust throughout the space. Veins of corruption pulsed beneath her scales, tracing forbidden runes on her skin as if chaos itself had left its mark.
She hovered in the air for a moment—a fallen god with the body of a monster.
Her mouth began to open slowly, her jaw muscles distorting beyond the natural. Black energy, liquid and flaming like night magma, began to concentrate in her throat, swirling in spirals that screamed with despair. It was as if she were about to spit out the end of the world.
And then…
ROOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!
The roar pierced the layers of reality like a spear. A thunderclap that was not only heard, but felt. The distant mountains shook. The clouds outside shattered into irrational patterns. The chamber itself, for an instant, seemed to freeze in time, as if every stone and every speck of dust had realized the magnitude of the threat and held its breath.
And then… came the cataclysm.
A burst of black energy, intertwined with crimson lightning and a pulsating white core, exploded from the creature’s throat. It wasn’t just fire. It wasn’t magic. It was pure annihilation.
The beam of destruction struck the center of the volcano and… the world collapsed.
KAAAAAAAAAAAAABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!
An angry explosion rose like a flower of death. The core of the mountain roared in response, releasing what remained of its magmatic soul. The inner walls shattered instantly, flying in billions of pieces of rock, ash, molten iron. Rivers of lava escaped through every crack like fleeing serpents.
The temple’s ceiling was obliterated, thrown into the skies in flaming fragments.
The pressure caused the floor to collapse. A sea of liquid rock erupted beneath the feet of the survivors. The sky above the crater lit up with the light of a black star—a flash that turned night into a macabre dawn.
The entire volcano exploded.