The Villainess Wants To Retire-Chapter 392: Choice

The morning sun offered no warmth, only a harsh, white glare that made the frost-covered pines look like jagged glass. Eris’s group had been moving for hours, the silence of the woods pressing in on them. The only sound was the rhythmic crunch of snow and the labored breathing of the horses.

Then, the world began to growl.

It started as a low, wet rasping, the sound of massive lungs struggling for air. Then came the splintering of ancient wood. Fifty yards ahead, a hundred-year-old pine simply tipped over, its trunk snapped like a toothpick.

From the shadows of the dense thicket, they emerged.

Four of them. Colossal ice bears, each the size of a small mountain cottage, their fur a shimmering, crystalline white that refracted the morning light into a thousand blinding shards. Ordinarily, a Drogar was a majestic, solitary creature, content to sleep through the centuries in the high caves unless provoked.

But these were not ordinary.

"Their eyes," Eris whispered, her hand instinctively flying to her chest as she felt the seal throb. "Look at their eyes."

The bears’ eyes weren’t the intelligent, piercing green of their species. They were glazed and milky, unfocused yet burning with a frantic, artificial rage. Froth flecked their jowls, and they moved with a jerky, unnatural twitching that defied their massive bulk.

"Something’s controlling them too," Eris realized, her voice tight with dread. "Just like the golems. This isn’t a territory dispute. It’s an ambush."

The lead Drogar didn’t roar a warning. It simply lunged.

"Formation! Shields up!" Thyren screamed, his sword clearing its scabbard in a silver flash.

The guards scrambled, forming a tight, defensive circle around Eris. They were the elite of Nevareth, men who had faced blizzards and barbarians, but against the Drogar, they were painfully outmatched.

The first bear struck the line like a falling cliff. Its massive claws, long as daggers and hard as enchanted ice, shattered a heavy oak shield as if it were parchment. The guard behind it was sent flying into a tree with a sickening crunch of bone; he didn’t move again.

"Arrows!" Thyren commanded.

A volley of black-feathered shafts hissed through the air, but the Drogar’s fur was more than hair, it was a literal armor of compacted frost. The arrows simply bounced off, clattering uselessly into the snow.

Another bear charged from the left, its weight making the ground tremble. It trampled two men into the red-stained slush before the others could even pivot. The clearing was rapidly turning into a slaughterhouse.

"Empress, RUN!" Thyren yelled, parrying a swipe that nearly took his head off. "We can’t hold them! Get to the ridge!"

Eris stood in the center of the chaos, the world slowing to a terrifying, crystalline crawl.

The calculation was simple and brutal. If she ran, she might live. She could use her speed to disappear into the trees, and perhaps Thyren and a few others would find a way to escape in the confusion. But most of them, the men who had just yesterday cheered her shot, the men who had looked to her for leadership, would be torn to shreds.

If she fought, the seal would crack further.

She could feel it already, a brittle, aching pressure behind her sternum. The Pyronox was awake, sensing the blood and the violence, scratching at the glass of her soul.

She looked at a young guard, barely twenty, who was currently staring down the maw of the largest bear, his hands shaking so hard he could barely hold his spear.

I am not a spectator, she thought. I am the Empress of this frozen hell.

"GET BEHIND ME!" she roared.

She stepped forward, her boots melting the snow down to the black soil. Fire ignited at her hands, not the flickering orange of a campfire, but a roaring, white-hot localized sun.

Eris didn’t hold back. She unleashed a massive, concentrated burst of dragon flame toward the first Drogar.

The fire slammed into the beast’s chest, and for the first time, the controlled glaze in its eyes shattered. It let out a sound that wasn’t a roar, but a high-pitched, agonized shriek as its crystalline armor turned to scalding steam. It retreated, its fur blackened and smoking, the mental tether of its controller temporarily severed by the sheer agony of the heat.

CRACK.

The sound echoed inside Eris’s skull. A sharp, jagged pain lanced through her chest, so intense it robbed her of breath. She stumbled, a gasp escaping her lips as she clutched at her tunic. The fracture in the seal had increased in size.

But a second bear was already charging, its jaws wide enough to swallow her whole.

"Not today," she hissed through gritted teeth.

She threw her hands out again. Another blast, more violent than the first. The bear went down, skidding through the mud, its face a mask of charred ruin.

CRACK. The seal was widening. She could feel the Pyronox’s heat beginning to leak directly into her blood. A thin, dark trickle of blood began to seep from her right nostril, freezing against her lip.

The third bear, the largest and most aggressive of the pack, saw its companions fall and redirected its entire focus toward her. It didn’t flinch. It didn’t hesitate. It moved with the relentless, singular purpose of a machine.

"EMPRESS, STOP!" Thyren screamed, seeing her sway.

"NOT YET!" Eris screamed back.

She gathered everything she had left. She reached into the very core of the dragon’s rage and pulled. A massive column of black flame erupted from her, a pillar of fire so dark and so hot that it lit up the forest for miles.

The trees nearby burst into spontaneous combustion. The third bear didn’t just die; it was incinerated, its massive form vanishing into a cloud of ash and vapor.

The cost was catastrophic.

Eris fell to one knee, her vision swimming in red and gold. Her hand was clamped over her heart, her fingers digging into her skin as if she could physically hold the seal together from cracking any further. Every breath felt like inhaling molten lead.

The fourth Drogar was the only one left, and it was the most crazed. It ignored the fire, ignored the steam, and lunged toward the kneeling, weakened woman in the center of the clearing. It was ten feet away. Five.

Eris raised a trembling hand, but there was nothing left in the tank but smoke.

BOOM.

A massive, impenetrable wall of jagged, blue-tinted ice erupted from the earth directly in front of her. It was ten feet thick and twenty feet high, appearing with such violence that the charging bear slammed into it with a sickening thud, dazed and broken.

It was familiar magic. It was the North itself.

"ERIS!"