The dragon's harem

With one claw on Arad’s neck and one on Kossuth’s shoulder, Eris knew well that she was lucky those two didn’t just crush her. The sheer amount of energy coming out of Arad’s draconic body far outclassed anything she had ever had. The laws of nature weren’t binding him anymore, and if he had pulled this back in the mortal world, an entire continent would have already been cursed to death.

There was a reason why every black hole has an event horizon, and it was to keep the madness of the singularity hidden away from the outside world. Where time and space stop making sense, and where the very existence of matter becomes a suggestion more than a fact. What Arad was now resembled a naked singularity more than a living being as time and space shattered around him, and all matter couldn’t maintain its shape close to him.

On the other hand, Kossuth was a whole different beast. She was hot, far hotter than anything Eris could have ever imagined, as if she had an infinite influx of energy. Her flames burned the fabric of the universe itself as fuel and were probably as hot as the primordial soup at the dawn of time. This clash between them wasn’t as simple as two dragons fighting, but it was two forces of nature ripping at each other.

"Move aside." Arad spoke, and before Eris could even fathom what he said, she was already close to the throne room’s wall, having unconsciously followed his order. That wasn’t a request, nor was it an order. Arad told her what she was going to do, and she did it. Because if she didn’t, this situation would have gotten far more complicated than it was.

"She listens to you... How nice of her." Kossuth took a single step forward, and her entire body turned into a wave of endless flames, crashing onto Arad as if he were a titanic boulder at the edge of a stormy sea. Arad wasn’t going to just take her hit, so with a single swing of his tail, he pushed most of those waves away.

The old archon flew toward Eris’s head. "You came here to stop them. Do something. They’ll destroy this entire heaven and the entire plane." As he growled, she glared right back at him. It was clear that this archon could tell she was a goddess, and that is why he was talking to her as if she could stop them.

"Can’t you see it? Neither of us can stop those two. Neither of them is serious, and we better not fuel them." She glared at the archon. "Arad can consume souls, so did any of your angels truly perish?"

It was then that the archon realized just how much Arad was holding back against them. He was a void dragon, and they grew by consuming souls to accelerate their aging. Arad was especially attuned to souls, and so if he wanted, he could’ve torn all of the angels’ souls, yet he didn’t. He destroyed their bodies, but left their souls untouched so they could reform later.

The old archon immediately asked for a report about the heaven section where the mortal souls are living in bliss, and he was even horrified to hear that none of the damage reached them even though Arad flew right above their gardens. "He was intentionally targeting just the fighting angels and structures?"

Even if Arad’s human soul was damaged and he couldn’t fathom human morals and emotions, he was still conscious and himself. "Right now, neither of them would kill the other, and we’d better just accept that outcome." Eris sighed, "Did you notice that his beauty isn’t blinding you anymore even though it is still affecting Kossuth? The situation is under their control, so relax a bit."

The clash between Arad and Kossuth only lasted two seconds to Eris and the old archon, but to the two fighters, it felt more like a whole minute as Arad had shattered time around them so much that it almost didn’t flow at all.

Compared to Kossuth, Arad lost in all stats. She was far stronger than he was, faster, heavier, more durable, and even had far more energy stored to spend. She had lived longer and had several thousand years to hone her power, and he clearly wasn’t the first space-shattering nightmare she had faced.

Countless elder void dragons had tried to fight her and win her as a mate, but all of them had ended up with their limbs broken and their balls burned to ash. All without letting any of them even lay a single claw on her pristine white scales. The only void who was able to fight her and win was Arad’s mother, Violet. Even now, Kossuth still remembered their fight, which lasted over a week.

The reason for that was actually a bit funny, since Violet came to her right after she gave Arad the [Ho-white Nova] that he used to blast Vlad’s kingdom with.

As powerful as Arad got, he was nowhere near his own mother, and his control over space and time was derived from his innate draconic magic, his natural ability to control the void as a void dragon, and that link of magic quickly melted and crumbled in the face of Kossuth’s sheer heat.

It wasn’t that Kossuth overthrew Arad’s control over space; her heat, reaching the peak of the primordial soup, simply prevented Arad’s will from even interacting with space. The same way proteins and pheromones get cooked and disabled by extreme heat, Kossuth’s unmatched infernal flames broke the link between Arad and space.

His claws couldn’t reach her as she had no physical form, and his void slowly lost its power, soon releasing its grip on time, and the clash between them ended with Kossuth smacking Arad to the ground with one massive downward smack of her burning talon.

The fight was over, and Arad’s titanic draconic body lay motionless on the ground with Kossuth still pressing her claw on his skull to the ground, giving him one last stare. "It was a fun fight, Arad Orion. No dragon had ever managed to touch me in the past four thousand years, and you’re the first." Of course, one drakaina had managed to do it, and that was his mother.

Removing her claw from Arad’s head, she sat down and threw a glance toward Eris. "Your dragon here is quite the handful to handle. Temperamental, aggressive, intelligent, and absolutely deadly." But in that moment, the wall beside them shattered, and a massive red drakaina flew in, landing inside the throne room with a missing arm and several burning black scars on her body. But what horrified Eris the most was that she was dragging another Arad with her, one that was beaten and burned to a crisp.

"Mother!" Zaleria threw Arad’s second body on the ground and sighed. "Those wounds aren’t healing." She looked at her own wounds, which were marred with Arad’s black void, still boiling and sizzling. Her body was made of pure flames even though it looked like any regular dragon body, so she should’ve been immune to physical damage.

Kossuth smiled. "He damaged your soul, so your flames can’t fully form a body." She threw another glass at the still worried Eris. "He came here to fight me as a distraction while the Gemini clone of him went to retrieve Amber. "I know that! How do I heal them before they damage my soul any more than this?"

"Arad!" Eris rushed to try and heal Arad, only for him to merge back into one body and heal on his own in less than a second. "I guess I failed." He sighed and waved his claw, causing the wounds on Zaleria’s body to quickly disappear. "I was going to use her as a hostage, but it turned out she was more of a problem than I expected."

Zaleria glared at him. "More of a problem? You attacked me out of nowhere!" She flapped her wings in disapproval, and Arad laughed. "Out of nowhere? Your mother was the one to attack me out of nowhere. All I did was go for the weakest link in the chain to make sure my wives are safe." He had, in fact, succeeded in securing Amber and could’ve teleported away with Vorvadoss’s magic if he wanted.

Kossuth smiled. "You know, there are fools who thought they could fight me and survive, and there are similar fools who thought they could fight Zaleria and win. You’re the first one to try doing both at the same time." She then looked a bit sad. "But really? I’m her mother and a divine goddess, yet you only used a quarter of your power against her and threw everything else on her."

"I needed to make sure Amber was safe, so most of my power was directed in that way." His jaw slowly opened up, and a black hole was burning there between his massive fangs. "If you want to face my full power, I’ll gladly oblige." The entire palace started cracking as Arad let only a tiny bit of the black hole’s gravity out. His body turned into pure black nothingness as he took on his void form, and that was the moment that Eris knew Arad wasn’t serious before.

Baal appeared right above Arad with all of his wings expanded, and a second black hole burning right above his titanic wings. "If you two dare stand against my lord, then not even divinity would save you." There were also clear signs of Destruction divine magic, traces of what Kossuth could only link to greater abominations like Damnation and Nyar’s avatars, and many more, all radiating from Arad’s nebulous body.

Kossuth licked her lips. "Now you’re turning me on. Been thousands of years since I’ve gotten wet seeing a dragon." Zaleria immediately smacked her in the side. "MOM!"