JAWS (TOME 9 of the TIAMAT'S WARS SERIE)

Isa Bere

In a dark dungeon in the caves at the base of the castle overlooking the capital of the kingdom of New England. The city of York. Ancient cities like London were nothing more than huge craters filled with water. Traces of conflicts from another age and of unheard-of violence.

Prince Raoul, built like a block of granite.

The head, the neck being carved into a single square block. He descended the stairs, without making the slightest noise, yet his colossal size should have made the stones and gravel squeak.

As if by magic, the torches lit up in the previous one. This brought him to an even bigger room.

Ice surrounded the walls of the cave...

The colossus continued to advance. He drew his sword and stuck it into a boar tied up especially for the lord.

The huge boar served as an appetizer on a toothpick...

A bright figure was lurking in the corner. You could hear its sobs.

The cave was shaking. But it was the trembling of the creature.

She looked at the prince for a moment and looked away. At that moment, she looked like a child or a young woman, her eyes filled with terror and sadness.

At the approach of Raoul, the chains rattled. The creature was looking for a corner, a crevice, a hole to take refuge in.

It ended up sticking its head into a stone corner, a bit like an ostrich.

This creature that must have been majestic, full of life and joy, a little like a joyful fairy, was no longer a shadow of its former self, almost a waste. Raised, she moaned.

Raoul pulled on the chain attached to the neck of the broken creature.

"ISABERE! You are a dragon! Not a wimp!"

The creature panicked. It's not like a human being who knows how to react to pressure, but an animal and intelligent being who was dominated by his survival instincts to take pity on it.

He fired a sharp blow and the head was pulled abruptly out of the hole.

He then kicked the moaning dragon and pulled the chain to get the head of the dragon in front of his face. The creature's eyes fled the prince's gaze as he held the dragon's head with one hand, the other crushing its snout to stop it from blowing.

He dragged the creature to a fountain with a terrible head. A vampire fountain, perhaps?

Sharp spikes and a painful mechanism was used to bleed and collect the blood.

This idol brought back from the underworld, or from a disturbed spirit was there, enthroned in a Gothic space of the dungeon.

"Tongue or paw!"

The dragon reared up, pulling with all its remaining strength, like a beaten, dominated and broken dog.

The collar pushed its neck back, revealing scales damaged by the multiple frictions.

He pulled the strap and the horns of the mechanism clasped Isabère's head.

A stylus sank into his nose and a red, icy liquid flowed into the receptacle.

The dragon cried, it was impossible to moan and the sound was muffled in her nose.

She struggled, and the more she struggled, the more she bled.

Then he lifted his foot from the pedal operating the mechanism and the strap pulled out her bloody nostril and she ran to hide in a corner of the cave. She fell, tripped, holding her nose in one paw, and ran over the other three. She moaned and screamed with a whimper.

Raoul took a golden cup and inserted it under the fountain's receptacle and blood flowed into it.

Raoul looked in the dark, towards the creature and towards an imaginary point in the direction of the throne.

Then he raised his chalice and drank the contents.

Then he threw his cup to the ground and wiped his mouth with his fur cuff.

"HAHAHA! Soon I will rule this land and the whole continent!"

"Thank you, ISabera! Your blood is exquisite! Too bad you're not human, I would have made you my mistress and you would bear my offspring."

Silence was his only answer and he resumed his ascent of the stairs to the castle and its outbuildings.

A Machiavellian smile painted his face.

"Dirk, you're a pebble in my shoe!"