The dragon's harem

As Arad and Eris walked out of the church and rode in the decorated carriage that the church had prepared for them, all the people waiting outside moved out of the way, and then followed them out of the city. To the people, this was the most important part about Eris becoming one of their queens.

The reason was simple, death.

The one thing mortals struggled to deal with was death, their inevitable end, and what lies beyond it. Many wanted the sweet embrace of nothing, but many more wanted the radiant blessing of heaven, or even a second chance in another life, but none were sure of where they would end up.

Eris, who had always sent their kin to the afterlife, the one who cremated and buried their loved ones with care, was here, and she was now taking the spotlight as a divine being. To the people, this meant that she could now keep watch over the dead in the afterlife as well.

Are their loved ones happy in the afterlife? Did they reincarnate somewhere, or did they end up rotting in hell? All of those questions needed answering, and the people now looked toward Eris to give them the answers.

Of course, even though Eris might know the answer to some of those questions, she wasn’t going to answer them so easily. Because while many believed their kind ended up in heaven, they could’ve been in hell, and there were even people who were considered heinous villains who ended up in heaven.

The nature of death itself went against the idea of learning what’s beyond its nebulous boundary, since knowledge was the base of understanding, and anything that was fully understood by mortals would lose its value and mystic nature.

The reason for that was the number of gods and their portfolios. Eris herself should be putting murderers in her heaven, since she was the goddess of murder. Many people still considered that the heavens of the evil gods are like hell, that the people in the heaven of murder, for example, are constantly killing each other over and over in a mad frenzy, but that wasn’t the case.

Her Murder heaven was like all other heavens, peaceful, cozy, and right now, empty. Eris didn’t send anyone there. And this was the second reality of heaven that the people are better not understanding, and it is that no matter how deep their faith is or how hard they work, that effort isn’t what gets them into heaven, but the will of their god.

There was a huge difference between following the creed and portfolio of a god, and appeasing that god so they put you in their heaven. So while Eris was the goddess of murder, being a murderer won’t allow you to get into her heaven, but will get her to throw you in hell instead.

As they approached the graveyard, Eris looked at the countless gravestones and felt a bit sad. The people were behind her, praying for the dead, but the dead weren’t here; those graves were empty. The corpses inside were either ashes or had already decomposed ages ago, and even if they are new, corpses are just that, corpses with no soul.

Their words were being spoken to nothing, and unless they mentioned her by name, she wasn’t hearing their prayers at all. Then, while standing at the entrance of the graveyard with Arad by her side, she got a quick notice from Death Herself, informing her that she is transferring several thousand prayers to Eris’s angels to process them.

When praying to the dead, Death is the only one who listens. Looking back, Eris could see a harrowing sight. As the people prayed for their loved ones, an eldritch nightmare horror of pure darkness, rot, and endless, ever-evolving decay stood behind everyone. That was Death in her true form, listening to the people’s prayers, watching over their lives, and counting the remainder of their lives.

Seeing Death’s true form, Eris wasn’t scared, just… confused. That thing, Death, didn’t have a single horrifying form, and that explained how she could reach every and all souls in the entire universe without being late, not even a fraction of a second.

The Death who showed behind everyone was a reflection of their souls, a deformed, twisted copy of their very nature, a thing they were born with, and one that they’ll never be separated from. When a life is born, its Death is born with it.

Among the crowd, a widow carried a baby in her arms. She was here to pray for the soul of her late husband, and when Eris looked at the baby, she could see a tiny dark spot of rot and decay within the baby’s pure white soul.

Death was a crucial part of the soul, like the heart of a body, and without it, the soul won’t even form in the first place. Death… was technically a sexually transmitted disease that infects the soul, with a 100% mortality rate.

But there was only one person who didn’t have an avatar of death behind their back, and that was Arad by her side. He was different than everyone else. It wasn’t that he was immortal; he could probably be killed, but his soul cannot be destroyed or erased.

To Eris’s eyes, the truth about Arad’s soul lay bare, and knowing it, made her scared. The soul inside Arad was empty, translucent like nothing and only reflecting the dark void of his stomach, and that had a very good reason.

Arad’s soul is the soul of the entire universe and everything within it. It is the soul of the gods, of the worlds, of dirt and stone, of air, of everything and anything. He was AO, the overgod, and the universe was indeed his great body.

So, what does that mean? It was simple. Arad’s soul cannot die because Death herself is a concept conjured by that soul’s power. He was operating on a different plane of existence, a different dimension above even Death, so while temporarily killing him was possible, his soul would always emerge back up.

This only made her even more nervous about their coming fight, as she wasn’t sure if Murder could work on him. Can she murder a being beyond even Death? She was certain that winning the fight wasn’t impossible, but the convoluted nature of Arad’s soul made it an extremely hard task to tackle.

That also explained why many people just love him. It was mainly thanks to his soul, and the fact that all other souls instinctively knew of their origin. That also explained why all of the abominations, who didn’t originate from his soul, feared him.

Arad was probably more similar to Nyar than they wanted to admit. He could probably absorb the souls of mortals and gods, then release them in the same way Nyar does with his abominations, which was horrifyingly already happening as Arad was doing that with his void creatures.

It also made Eris realize what all of that means. It meant that everyone was an abomination, both the mortals of the universe and those outer nightmares. Arad was neither a dragon, a human, nor a Nymph; he was an abomination like Nyar, and the mortals of the world are the abominations he spawned to populate his universe, the same way Nyar created his nightmarish abominations.

Now that Eris was thinking about it… Aren’t Arad’s incarnations too similar to Nyar’s avatars? Hold up… The Emperor of Nothing… When Arad walked hell with a dark cloak, wasn’t he looking just like a black version of Nyar who wears a yellow cloak?

^They are the same race, the same kind of outer beings…^ As Eris thought that, two legs wrapped her neck, and Yog tapped on her head as she appeared sitting on her shoulders. A voice rang in Eris’s head, ^I’ll stop your right there, what lies beyond is still too risky for you to learn.^

Arad looked at Yog and grabbed her by the head. “What are you doing here? We’re in the middle of an important ceremony.” He growled, and she laughed. “Do not worry, the dead won’t mind.”

She clapped her feet, combed her toes, and then smiled. [Elemental Expansion: Death Parade]

At that moment, all of the souls of the dead appeared above their respective graves to greet their living relatives and lovers. Yog quickly shouted, “This is a grace from the new Divine Eris, it is a one-time miracle, so make the best out of it!”