The dragon's harem

”To move my wings.” Arad replied as he flexed, and a pair of black wings burst out of his back, spanning over twenty meters wide. ”I’m like her... but black.” He pointed toward Gamond, and Arlo looked back.

”I see... another lizard.” Arlo spoke, and Gamond was about to crush him on the spot, but Arad laughed. ”You know what lizards are?” He took a step forward, and Arlo backed away.

”Extinct for thousands of years, but we still have data about them.” He smiled out of stress. ”Why did you bring us here, to the dead rift?” He had to change the subject before those two killed them.

Arad smiled and waved his massive arm above Merlin’s head. ”This here is my wife; her name is Merlin, and she is here to close this rift for good. But as you might know, this rift is quite hard to deal with, so we need some information to close it?”

Arlo looked at Merlin for a second, then back at Arad. Something wasn’t adding up as Merlin was just a third of Arad’s height, and beside him, she looked like a whole other kind of alien. He really wanted to ask them if it even fit, but he had to push that thought to the back of his head and focus on what mattered.

”Want to close it? That’s impossible.” Arlo growled with a smile, ”The rift is a crack in the space-time fabric and is linked to multiple dimensions all at once. To move it even a finger, you’ll need enough energy to power an entire planet for a hundred years.”

Waving his hand, Arlo gave the rift a sharp glare. ”It has calmed down, so they stopped fuelling it from the other side. Soon, it’ll become completely invisible and untouchable. You can just forget about it.”

Merlin frowned and whispered to Arad. At this moment, she still didn’t understand Orcish and still relied on Arad’s thoughts to understand what Arlo was saying, so she also needed him to speak for her.

”She says that we can’t just leave a potential backdoor into this world. If it can be opened by giving it a lot of energy, then it should be mendable.” Arad spoke for Merlin, and he turned toward the rift. ”The fabric of space and time is stressed a lot here, so we have to first relax that stress before untangling those threads.”

Arlo frowned, ”Untangle? It is hard enough to untangle a ball of wires, let alone if there were billions of tiny wires and each of them carried enough energy to shatter a continent. We can’t play with the thread of space and time, only follow their lead.”

Merlin understood what Arlo was talking about; this entire rift was a mess. That is why she was trying to cover it up with a labyrinth instead of fixing it, because doing the latter indeed seemed impossible. Now, she only needed to find out if it was literally impossible or just impossibly hard to achieve.

”Is there a way to close it. Is it impossible because it needs an absurd amount of energy, or is it impossible because of something else?” Merlin asked, and Arad translated to Arlo, who immediately frowned.

”What does she think I am? I’m not a scientist, just a soldier.” He rubbed the back of his head. ”From what I remember, to fully close this rift once and for all, the energy and control needed to pull the threads of space together go up to infinity, so there is no possible way to get infinite energy.”

Merlin smiled, ”So... there is a way; it just needs infinite power.” As she spoke, it was as if Arlo read her smile and added a quick, sharp comment. ”Infinite power to keep closed, it never stops needing more energy.”

Merlin turned toward Arad with a smile. ”I’ve got an idea to make everything much easier. If we find a second rift, then we can have them pull on each other to generate the energy we need to keep them both closed. It’ll be like tying two doors with a rope to each other so you can’t open either of them.”

Arad looked back at Arlo. ”She asks if there is another rift in this world, one that we can use to keep this one close. From what I understand, she wants to use two rifts so each one can keep the other closed.”

Arlo growled as he rubbed his hair, ”Just call Beatrice.” He turned around and waved his hand at the ATTR. ”Beatrice, come over here! This one wants to close the rift for good.”

Beatrice was too scared to get out, but she eventually did while stealing glances at the titanic drakaina glaring at them from the back. Gamond’s head alone was as big as one of the mountains they saw, and that was absolutely horrifying.

She had expected that this mission would fail, but not like this, not with them being captured and led around without even chains. How could such a creature even exist? How is the ecosystem of this world even supporting such a massive beast?

She slowly walked toward Arlo, with her fear growing bigger and bigger with each step in the cold snow, and then threw another glance back at Gamond and didn’t find her. She froze, paled, and then flew right toward Arlo to hide behind him. ”Where did she go?”

Gamond then appeared from behind the ATTR in her humanoid form, wearing a neat Victorian maid outfit and looking far less threatening than before. Besides the fact that she was three meters tall, nothing about her looked strange, and if she had a normal height, many would think she was just a helpless maid.

”You don’t need to be that scared of me.” Gamond smiled, ”If Arad says that I can’t harm you, then I won’t.” She lifted her hand and flicked her fingers, causing the titanic ice wall she created to enclose the Northern Arctic lands to crumble, and it was then that Arlo and his crew learned that what they thought was a natural wall of mountains and glaciers that they had to find a way through was made by this monster.

”You made that?” Arlo growled, and Gamond flicked her fingers again, causing the mountain wall to grow out of the ground in seconds. ”Of course, and I could do it all day long. If I wanted, I can freeze this entire world and yours.”

Arad looked at them with a proud smile. ”She is also my wife, and what we call a world power. A single creature that has enough power to singlehandedly wipe out life from an entire world.” He then crossed his arms. ”So, we have a lot of energy to spare. Would you help us close this rift?”

Arlo tapped Beatrice on the shoulder. ”If we want to go back home, we have to help them. Otherwise, we’re useless to them, and that would mean that only death awaits us.” He then looked at the ATTR. ”What do you say? We help them, or die?”

After a moment of silence, he turned toward Arad with a smile, lifted his spear, and the black reflected the radiant sunlight.

”Our lives... If you want them, then come and take them.” At that moment, he flashed toward Arad at blinding speed, teleporting through space at a harrowing speed.