Rise Of The Mage King

Chapter 8

The Great Hall of the Vargus Estate was empty of all its rich guests. The loud music was gone. The laughing was gone. The only sound left was the crashing of broken plates and the heavy, terrified breathing of Lord Vargus.

All around the room, expensive silk dresses and dropped gold rings lay on the floor. The rich nobles had run away like scared sheep. They pushed each other out the broken iron doors to escape the monster covered in gray mud.

Lord Vargus did not run. He could not run. His legs refused to work.

Vargus crawled backward on the smooth marble floor. His expensive red velvet jacket was ruined, covered in spilled wine and dirt. He kept pushing himself away from Drogo. His hands slipped on the wet floor.

Vargus looked up at Drogo Payne. The boy was just standing there, completely still.

Just an hour ago, Drogo was nothing. He was a dirty, weak, sick "Null." He was a broken bucket for Vargus to throw his magic garbage into. Vargus was the proud lion, and Drogo was the smallest, weakest insect.

But now, the world was upside down.

Vargus looked at the four piles of gray dust near the door. Those piles used to be his best guards. They were strong men with strong magic. Now they were just dirt blowing in the wind. And Drogo had done it by pointing a single finger.

Vargus’s heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. Cold sweat dripped down his face. For the first time in his entire life, the great Lord Vargus felt true, freezing fear. The predator had become the prey.

"Stay away!" Vargus yelled. His voice cracked like a scared little boy's. "I am a High Lord of the Sun! I have the blood of kings! You cannot do this!"

Drogo slowly tilted his head. The deep violet light glowing in his eyes did not blink.

"The blood of kings," Drogo repeated softly. His voice echoed in the large, ruined room. "When you pumped your poison into my chest, did your king's blood tell you to smile? When you kicked me into the dark, did it make you feel like a god?"

Drogo took a slow step forward. Crack. His bare foot stepped on a dropped gold cup, crushing it flat against the marble.

"You..." Vargus stuttered, holding his hands out. "You are not a Null. Nulls do not have magic! What kind of demon possessed you in the Chasm? What are you?"

"I am exactly what you made me," Drogo said. His voice was cold and flat. There was no anger in it. There was no sadness. There was only a terrible, hungry emptiness.

Drogo took another step.

Vargus realized that talking was not going to save him. The boy was going to kill him. The boy was going to turn him to dust, just like the guards.

Fear suddenly turned into wild, crazy anger inside Vargus.

“No!” Vargus thought. “I am a High Mage! I will not die to a street rat! I will burn him until there are not even ashes left!”

Vargus stopped crawling. He pushed himself up to his knees, and then to his feet. He planted his shiny leather boots wide on the floor. He gritted his teeth, his face twisting with pure hatred.

"You think you can scare me?" Vargus screamed. Spittle flew from his lips. "I am the master of fire! I will show you why the strong rule the world!"

Vargus clapped his hands together with a loud BANG.

Instantly, the temperature in the Great Hall shot up. It went from freezing cold to boiling hot in a single second. The red wine spilled on the floor started to bubble and turn into steam. The wood of the long dining tables caught on fire, burning with bright orange flames.

But the fire gathering around Vargus was not orange. It was not yellow.

It was pure, blinding blue.

Blue fire was the hottest fire in the world. Only the most powerful, elite nobles could create it. It took a massive amount of magic energy to make even a little bit of blue fire. But Vargus was pouring every single drop of his life force, every drop of his magic Core, into this one spell.

The blue fire wrapped around Vargus’s arms. It spun around his body like a tornado. The heat was so intense that the gold decorations on the walls began to melt, dripping down like yellow tears.

"Die, trash!" Vargus roared at the top of his lungs. "INFERNO DRAKE!"

Vargus threw both of his hands forward.

The tornado of blue fire exploded outward. It did not just shoot forward like a normal fireball. It took a shape. It grew a massive head with two burning horns. It grew long, fiery wings that brushed against the walls, melting the stone. It opened a giant mouth filled with teeth made of white-hot plasma.

It was a dragon made entirely of blue fire.

The Inferno Drake let out a deafening roar that shook the entire estate. The sound was so loud it shattered every glass window in the hall. The dragon was thirty feet long, and it rushed straight at Drogo, destroying everything in its path. The floor cracked and turned to hot lava underneath it.

Vargus laughed like a madman. His face was pale because he had used all his magic, but his eyes were wide with crazy joy. "Burn! Burn to nothing!" he screamed.

Drogo stood in the path of the giant blue dragon.

He did not raise his hands to protect his face. He did not try to dodge. He simply watched the massive beast of fire rushing toward him. The blinding blue light reflected in his glowing purple eyes.

“This is it,” Drogo thought. “This is the power of the high nobles. The power that burned our homes. The power that kept us in the mud.”

The heat was terrible. It burned the dirty rags off Drogo's chest, leaving his pale skin bare. But as the dragon’s giant mouth opened to swallow him whole, Drogo did not feel fear.

He felt hunger.

A deep, empty hole opened inside his chest. The Abyssal Archive, the dark god living in his blood, woke up fully.

“Eat,” the dark voices whispered in his mind. “Feast.”

Drogo opened his mouth. He unhinged his jaw slightly and took a deep, massive breath inward.

He inhaled.

When the giant blue dragon hit Drogo, it did not explode. It did not burn him. Instead, the magic broke.