The dragon's harem

As they ran away, the black dragon chased after them. It didn’t run or walk; It just slowly moved its front leg after them. As the titanic palm lumbered forward, its sheer size and speed plowed through the forest and trees, tearing them with ease after the running men.

The ground shook beneath their feet, and many of them stumbled and fell down, only to get crushed and torn like field rats getting stuck in a plowing machine. It took the men a second to realize that the black dragon wasn’t chasing them; it just moved its arm to grab its food. It didn’t matter how fast they ran; they still didn’t leave the dragon’s plate.

“Kiara! Can’t you chase it away with holy magic? That thing has to be foul! You’re a cleric, aren’t you?” One of the men shouted, and the woman gasped as she ran, looking at her cold holy symbol with a pale face.

“What’s the matter? Do something!” The man shouted again, and only then did the woman reply, looking at him with a terrified face. She was a cleric of a lesser god of thieves and burglars, a divine being of luck and fortune that some thieves pray to for better hauls and gain access to healing magic.

Many refer to that divine being as the twilight herald, and the only known fact about it is that in the past, it was a famous thief who managed to attain godhood. Right now, no matter how much that woman prayed, he refused to answer her prayers or even look in her direction. All that god could grant her was solace and mercy in the afterlife, if she managed to make it back to him.

The god made it clear that he could appeal to the black dragon and hope to spare her life, but that was too much effort on a single cleric, and not worth the risk.

“That dragon, it’s something even the gods don’t dare face. The Twilight Herald had abandoned us!” She cried, sending despair into everyone’s hearts.

“Damn it! Is that thing one of Tiamat’s mates or something? The hell it is doing here?” One of the thugs looked back, seeing that half of them had already been eaten by the dragons, and his turn was near.

“Damn you!” He screamed as the torn ground and splintering wood reached his back and swooped him into the dragon’s claws, soon to be eaten. The cleric looked back with tearful eyes, cried, then closed her eyes and kept running as fast as she could, hearing the screams of everyone she knew and loved die in the maws of the dragon.

She was powerless, weak, and insignificant in the face of the terror behind her. After running for what felt like an eternity, the screams finally died, and soon, she stumbled and rolled on the cold ground.

She was terrified, but forced herself to look back and see the dragon one last time before he ate her. But what she saw was nothing. A large chunk of the forest was devastated as if a storm had run through it, her comrades were nowhere to be seen, and the dragon, who seemed larger than life, had disappeared.

It all felt unreal, like a nightmare. He showed up out of nowhere, brutally hunted and ate everyone, then disappeared into the darkness of the night as if nothing happened.

With tears still flowing down her cheek, she stood and kept running anyway. Did the dragon feel pity toward her? Did he spare her life? Did her god manage to save her? She didn’t know, but now that the dragon was gone, she had to run and warn the others in the lair. If the dragon is hunting them, it’s bound to come again looking for more.

The cleric woman ran and ran until her feet bled, and after half an hour, she finally arrived at a small, hidden entrance in front of the bushes. She panted for air and then cried. “Open, it’s me… Kiara!”

The bushes moved, and soon, they turned around the corner like a door, revealing a round hole in the small hill. “Kiara? You survived that? We saw the dragon from afar. What did happen to everyone else?”

“It ate everyone… I ran; it must still be…” As Kiara lifted her eyes and looked at the man, she shat herself and screamed her lungs out. Behind the man she knew was another man, three meters tall, muscular like a titan, and he had the same burning purple eyes as the dragon.

“Huh?” The man gasped as Arad, behind him, lifted his arm and swung it. With a single backhand, the thug’s head cracked like a melon, and his body flew aside in a splatter of blood and brain matter, soon getting consumed by darkness.

Kiara knew that some powerful dragons can take a human form, and without a doubt, she was certain this hulking man was the dragon that just brutalized the entire band. But at this moment, she was too consumed by fear to think straight, and she ended up falling to her knees, unable to speak or cry for help.

She wasn’t spared, and her god couldn’t save her. The dragon only let her live a little bit longer so she could lead him to their hideout. Now that he was in front of her, she was sure going to die soon.

But instead of cracking her skull open like a walnut, Arad turned around and walked into the lair to kill everyone else there, leaving the cleric girl frozen in place.

“You’re mine, I guess…” Zephyr flew down from the sky and glared at the cleric girl with a sadistic smile. “Clerics can be assholes, but rarely evil. How about this, I’ll let you live if the fairies you captured vouch for you. If none did, I’ll skin you alive and hang your dying body on the forest’s edge as an example.”

As Arad walked into the lair, his body faded into the shadows and mixed with the darkness, turning into pure nothing. Two guards stood at the wall, and he easily crushed their skulls on the wall without making a sound. Beneath his palms, it was harder to leave them unscathed than to crack their skulls open like this.

It didn’t matter if they wore armor or used defensive magical barriers; to him, those humans were far too fragile, like snowflakes, their bodies would just melt on the palm of his hand.

He frowned as the smell hit his nose, fairies’ blood, and their muffled screams. They were captured alive, drugged, skinned for dust, and had their wings slowly ripped from their backs so as not to damage them. Then those who survived that were sold to wizards to experiment on with magic, and some were even left here to try and breed more.

Their cries, screams, and blood still hung in the air, casting a grim shadow darker than anything else in this cave. This was his empire, and this was what would happen if he didn’t put the nobles in line and make sure they did their job.

Arad passed by a room where several of the bandits were asleep, so he tore their throats. A woman was in a bathroom taking care of her business, so Arad opened the door, walked in on her, and crushed her head onto the bowl with a stomp.

One by one, he silently killed everyone. It didn’t matter if he crushed their skulls, punched a hole through their guts, or blasted them away with a slap; not a single sound escaped his void, and one after another, the bandits disappeared, not leaving a single drop of blood behind.

When Arad finally reached the cutting room, he could see them. Over a hundred fairies, all gravely injured, dead, or dying. One had her wings torn off, one had her skin zested away with a cheese grater, and one fairy was held from his arms, and slowly had his blood dripped through countless needles that impaled his legs.

Those bandits were collecting fairies’ wings, dust, blood, tears, and even corpses to sell for money, and it seems that they have been doing this for years, wasting the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent fairies.

“Who are you? Giant bastard.” A large man who was about to start dissecting a fairy paused, then looked back at Arad. “Men! Who is this? Get him out of my lab!”

Arad didn’t care to reply and just approached the man, then grabbed him by the face. “Let me go!”

Surprisingly, the man was quite strong. Arad could feel his fists tapping on his chest, unlike everyone else, whom he didn’t even feel. A hundred, maybe even level two hundred… what a waste of talent.

“Look at my eyes.” Arad growled as he glared at the man’s eyes with a passive face, looking directly at his trembling soul, and then reached forward with his palm, piercing his chest and ripping his soul alongside his heart.

This man shall not go to either hell nor heaven, his soul would forever be trapped inside Arad’s void to be tortured and toyed with by Damnation.

“Aella, their clients are now approaching the forest. Take them down. Ganta, deal with the monsters. Kaede, you contact the spirit grove.”