Cherreads

Chapter 23 - Chapter 23: Ashes!

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"Vicar!" the remaining witcher, Eskel, yelled, his voice filled with anguish and rage as he looked at the crumpled, lifeless form of his now-dead companion. He then turned back to Harry, his eyes blazing with a furious, vengeful glare.

"You'll pay for that, you bloody beast!" the man yelled, his voice cracking with emotion, as he charged recklessly towards Harry, his sword held high. 

Harry swiped at him with one of his enormous, razor-sharp claws, and to the man's credit, he actually managed to dodge the attack, ducking under the sweeping blow with surprising agility.

The man quickly, almost desperately, cast a shimmering Quen sign on himself, the magical shield flaring to life around him in the hopes that it would give him at least some small measure of protection against the enraged dragon. 

Harry had to admit, grudgingly, that it was probably the smartest, and indeed only, magical move the witcher could make in this situation. 

Most of the witchers' limited, sign-based magic wouldn't be nearly powerful enough to actually affect him in any significant way. 

Even the Quen shield probably wouldn't do much against a direct hit from him, but it was, he supposed, better than absolutely nothing.

"Alright then, c'mon, you overgrown lizard!" the witcher yelled defiantly, trying to sound braver than he undoubtedly felt, as he readied his silver sword, its polished blade gleaming faintly in the dim cave light.

Harry had learned, quite recently after first arriving in this world, that silver swords, while certainly effective against many monsters, could do little more than leave superficial scratches on his incredibly tough, magically-reinforced dragon hide. 

He had also discovered, much to his surprise, that other, native dragons in this world seemed to be significantly weaker than he was, both physically and magically, though they did possess the rather unique ability to absorb most forms of offensive magic, which wasn't something Harry himself could do while in his dragon form. An interesting evolutionary divergence.

Harry finally, with a sound like grinding boulders, pushed himself up to his full, truly massive height, towering over the puny, solitary Witcher. 

He stared down at the brave, foolish man, his emerald eyes glowing with an inner fire. He swiped his claws once more, a feint this time, and just as he expected, the man skillfully, reflexively, dodged out of the way. 

Harry, however, had anticipated this exact move. As the witcher moved, Harry opened his massive jaws and bellowed a torrent of white-hot, incandescent flames directly at the now-exposed man. 

He heard a brief, terrified scream, quickly cut short, before the intense, magical flames completely engulfed and incinerated the witcher.

Harry grunted in annoyance once the man was well and truly dead, the smell of cooked meat now filling the cave. 

It seemed like every few years, some remote village or another would get brave, or desperate, and put a contract out on him, the "great black dragon of the peaks." 

It was mainly so-called "dragon professionals" usually just overconfident hunters or charlatans who came after him, but occasionally, like today, he would get an overzealous witcher, or in this case, two of them, who got in way over their heads and decided to try and kill him for a pouch of coin. Idiots.

Harry shifted his massive body, the scales rippling and flowing, back into his familiar human form. He stood over the charred, smoking remains of the unfortunate witcher, his face scrunched up in distaste at the acrid, burnt smell coming from the body. 

Quickly, he pulled out his wand and, with a muttered incantation, vanished the remains of the witcher completely. No need to leave a mess.

With that done, he walked over to the other one, Vicar, the one he'd smashed against the wall. He crouched down and checked the body over. 

It was actually relatively intact, considering how incredibly hard he had slammed it against the unyielding stone. He wondered, with a flicker of scientific curiosity, if witchers possessed a naturally stronger, more resilient bone structure than the average human.

That brought him to thinking about the other various non-human races he had encountered in this world, and their unique physical structures and biological adaptations. 

Obviously, vampires, the higher ones at least, had much stronger muscles and a significantly denser bone structure than humans. 

This meant that their metabolism was also much, much higher than most other creatures, which was precisely why they had to drink blood t carried a far greater concentration of energy than most other foods did, even when those foods were eaten raw.

Harry knew that witchers underwent significant, often dangerous, mutations as part of their creation, thanks to Ciri mentioning it briefly when talking about her surrogate father, Geralt, all those years ago. 

But he didn't truly know the full extent of those mutations, or how they affected their physiology beyond the obvious enhanced senses and reflexes. 

It was something he'd have to research further, when he had the time. Always more to learn, always more to discover.

Harry gave the crumpled body of the witcher a cursory kick with his foot, just to make absolutely, positively sure the man was fully and completely dead. 

Satisfied that there was no lingering twitch or groan, he then, with a grunt of effort, picked up the surprisingly heavy corpse and began to drag it towards his hidden little laboratory, a section of the cave he'd expanded and kitted out over the years.

He cleared off the large, sturdy stone table that usually held all his little notes, his complex calculations, and his meticulously drawn-out plans plans he had for when Ciri finally decided to grace this world with her actual presence and, you know, pop out of her unsuspecting mother for the very first time. 

He then carefully, almost reverently, slumped the witcher's lifeless body onto the now-cleared table and got started on his impromptu examination.

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