The dragon's harem

Even though Kali sent Shuten, Ibaraki, Grace, and Thalia, three powerful demon lords and a shadow drakaina, Arad was still not confident that they could find the Kingdom of succubi. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust their abilities, but this place in and of itself was convoluted and hard to navigate.

“He looked like a giant man, but believe me. Nothing about him was human or even demonic.” The old, powerful demon growled, leaning on the stone counter. “He didn’t even put me in his eyes. He looked at the darkness, and I was nothing but a stain on the ground that escaped his list of notable things.”

The other demons listening gasped, “So that’s her Demonic lordship’s husband? I wonder just how powerful he really is.”

The old demon smiled. “Oh, don’t get me started. I saw him walk through the miasma as if it were nothing. Even I went through centuries of suffering just to get used to it.”

He lifted his hands, smacked a fist into his palm, then looked at the others with a bewildered face. “He reached to the ground, grabbed the miasma with his palm, and lifted it up, the mist, the fog! I don’t know, he did it, but he managed to pull it with his bare hands, like it was some kind of fuzzy fur.”

A demonic chuckled in the back, turning her massive and lumbering body toward them. “You’re old, but not ancient. That miasma isn’t a natural thing; it’s the blood of an ancient titanic demon, an unholy titanic of power that we cannot even fathom. Even demon lords don’t dare step there.”

The old demon glared at her, then smirked. “You fossil pig, I can walk the miasma, and I’m not a demon lord. Let me tell you something: the wisdom of those who tried. That miasma, it changes demons into something else, something wicked, something abhorrent.”

“I am not a pig, your wrinkly old wiener. My greatness is a boar.” She waved her hand, threw a glare at him, and then tapped her massive belly.

“You mean a bore? I never seen you explore the layer, not once in the past century.” He glared at her, “That miasma, I know it’s alive. I bet those changes it afflicts demons with are just whatever being you talked about trying to come back to life.”

She laughed, then called for a smaller demon to bring her a large drink. “I just hope that man doesn’t die. The last thing we need is her divinity being in a bad mood.”

At that moment, sunlight washed over them, coming from the open windows. They were sitting in what could be called a tavern for demons, a mixture of a brothel and a bar where demons come to fulfill all of their carnal desires.

And since they were in the abyss, sunlight shouldn’t be a thing. Only faint moonlight and the occasional firelight made by the demons to illuminate their homes and streets. The entire abyss was supposed to only have as much light as a moonlit night in the mortal world, nothing more, so the sunlight was strange, and caused all demons to stand up and look outside.

That was a huge and fatal mistake, since that was no sunlight.

A fireball several hundred meters wide burned in the middle of the sky, illuminating the entire layer for a few seconds, before all of its heat and energy burst outward in a deafening detonation. The demons who were outside got blasted away, those who looked out of the windows were knocked down, and the weaker buildings got swept away by the shockwave.

The large boar demoness was the only one not to get blasted away, and she suddenly moved as quickly as a lion. Grabbed several demons, pulled them out of the tavern’s hall, and threw them into the backroom before the debris and dust rushed through the windows.

“Damn it, youngsters.” She growled at the still stunned demons. “There is no sun here. If such a light appears, it’s either a massive spell, or that goddess Amaterasu is doing something here.”

She stood and looked from behind the counter, then threw a glance at the outside. Looking through her fingers, she zoomed out her vision and tried to locate the battlefield and see who the two monsters are who are clashing.

What she saw made her pale and shiver, an oily mass of disgusting tendrils, cackling maws, and bleeding eyes twisted and contorted all over the place, bleeding black ooze and smoking miasma. That wasn’t a demon, and it wasn’t a divine being.

She knew them; that thing is the unholy titan, an abominable sea of organs and guts that swallows everything. But last time she saw it, the thing did have a humanoid form, a titanic one. Why did it turn into a sea of blood and guts?

Asura, Kali’s father, did beat it to a pulp and rip its body apart, but it didn’t make sense for it to resurrect in that form. But what if it didn’t resurrect, but was forced to fight?

She looked through the blood and guts and finally saw him. A tall humanoid standing at over three meters tall, muscular, with a thin beard and burning purple eyes, glaring right back at her from the depths of the darkness.

Even the abomination didn’t notice her spying on them, but when Arad did, the demoness emptied her bowls on the spot and froze in place, sweating like a hog as she felt her entire soul getting licked and measured. As if she was drowning in a black ocean of tar, her brain overloaded into a trip, and all she could see was herself standing as a tiny ant in front of a towering Arad, whom she couldn’t even reach his toes in size.

She had seen Kali; she had seen countless demons and abominations in the ancient wars when Asura was the ruler of the abyss, but none had measured to this level of creepy terror. She wanted to look away, but couldn’t avert her eyes. Her entire body had stopped following her orders, and now she was stuck staring at Arad’s face as he glared right back at her from miles apart.

Like a deer suddenly coming face to face with a tiger, she remained as still as a log, hoping he would ignore her and pass, praying that he would see her as nothing more than a bug like he saw that old demon from before.

After confirming that whoever spied on him wasn’t a threat, Arad turned back to the mass of slithering organs and smiled. “Well, well, well, would you look at this. An abomination hiding down here. I know that you guys are everywhere.”

The mass of flesh didn’t respond, and instead exploded at him in a flood of guts and blood. Arad’s eyes flashed with light, and darkness rushed from his skin.

The entire layer quaked, the ceiling cracked, and the mountains wept lava as flames rushed everywhere, all drowning in a cacophony of blasts, pained moans, and the splatter of guts and bones cracking into splinters.

The demons who were used to death, violence, and gore were all terrified, hiding in their homes and holes in the mountains and underground, praying to Kali that this isn’t the end of this layer. There was a rumor that Kali’s new husband destroyed a layer in the past, and now, the demons here were almost certain that theirs was getting destroyed today.

After several minutes that felt like decades, the shaking finally stopped, and the flames died. The demons all looked around them, terrified and on the verge of crying blood. It had been centuries since any of them had felt true terror, but now, they had remembered it.

Out of nowhere, their layer had turned into a hellish inferno of pure death, which had never happened before. The large boar demoness finally gasped for air, still traumatized from Arad’s glare at her soul. That thing wasn’t normal; it was something she hoped to never see again.

She had seen hell, she had tortured and violated thousands of mortals and had seen the most heinous and horrific massacres to ever exist, but that was something else. The inevitability, the insignificance, and sheer, violating dominion she felt was far above anything demons could offer.

She finally forced herself to speak. “We need to leave, now!” She didn’t wait for anyone else and rushed toward the door. She’ll fly out and leave for the upper and safer layers. She doesn’t want to live in a layer where she isn’t the dominating one.

As she pulled the massive steel door open, she froze. Arad was standing there, holding a squished brain in his left hand, and glaring down at her with burning purple eyes.

“We need to talk.”