The dragon's harem

”So, you’re saying those orcs could be hiding in my territory without me having noticed? That is honestly absurd.” DelTaDa sat down, his massive body almost crushing several acres of land with ease. ”You know a dragon can tell how many ants crawl on their land. There is no way they’ll slip past me.”

Alcott crossed his arms as he was sitting on a massive boulder, feeling his rear end almost growing numb from the cold. ”They should’ve come here while you were still hibernating, and since you woke up to the explosion and immediately got distracted by the white drakaina, they could’ve noticed you first and gone into hiding. Those orcs are crafty, and they got a lot of strange trinkets and items that could help them achieve that.”

”I see... if that is possible, then I would do a second sweep of the land. But you said they have bombs.” He leaned down. ”Ones powerful enough to match the explosion from before.”

Alcott nodded. ”True, it’s not really a bomb, but an energy storage item that can be made to explode and release all of that power at once. As you might expect, that would be very bad. We can’t drive the orcs into a corner, as they might just detonate it.”

That was a real problem, as no matter how powerful an ancient red dragon is, there was no way his territory would remain unharmed with a thermonuclear blast going at its centre. Only a prepared and well-built magic dragon has a chance of neutralizing such a weapon. A light dragon, even someone like Betty, would be able to carry the bomb away and come back before it could explode. A time dragon can do the same by manipulating the flow of time, and a void dragon like Arad could swallow it whole. Altair was only caught off-guard by Samantha’s explosion since she didn’t know the extent of its power; if she did, she could’ve tried to do something like swallow it and hope that wouldn’t harm her, or void step away.

”So, let’s say we find them and confiscate those bombs. What are you going to do with them, dragon slayer?” DelTaDa looked at him, then threw a glance back at Kali and Kayden. ”Are you going to discard them in the Abyss’s wastelands, or have a way of neutralizing them?” He smiled, ”If you want, I can store them in my hoard for centuries. I can even bury them nine kilometres beneath the ground in the flow of magma where no one will ever reach them.”

Alcott hesitated for a second, and it was the pigeon sitting on his shoulder that replied. ”We’re going to feed them to Arad. His son.” The pigeon flapped its wings. ”I know it sounds risky, but to Arad, they are nothing more than a slightly spicy bite.”

DelTaDa snarled as he moved his head back. ”You don’t need to explain the prince’s power to me; I know who the Orions are and just how powerful they are.” He then threw a sharp glare toward Alcott. ”Did you really appease the Huntress, the Empress of the void dragons?”

”Do you know her?” Alcott lifted an eyebrow, and DalTaDa laughed. ”Of course, I inherited several tomes from my ancestors. She was mentioned in the history of this world.” He then looked at the pigeon. ”Tell me, Wizard. Do you know that this world we live in isn’t the mortal world, but a fake replica created by Tiamat?”

”What are you talking about?” The pigeon flapped its wings as it flew to sit on Alcott’s head. ”A fake replica?”

”At the end of the war five thousand years ago, Tiamat fought several deadly outsiders called the abominations in the mortal world, and they were led by a terrifying one called Vorvadoss. In that battle, she shattered the entire mortal world and cracked open a rift that allowed my ancestor Zaleria Shadowend to land a deadly blow on the abomination’s leader in exchange for her life. Afterward, the Overgod reprimanded her for that and had her build a new world as a punishment.”

He smiled. ”Soon after, she gave birth to the first void dragons, which some think was thanks to the space magic she saw and learned from fighting Vorvadoss. One of those first void dragons is Murasaki Orion, who was named and raised by Amaterasu. I’m certain you know who I am talking about, Dragon Slayer.”

”Murasaki, sounds eastern to me.” He smiled and Merlin quickly added. ”That’s purple; probably means violet, which is the name she uses now.”

The red dragon expanded his wings. ”I’ll look for them, and I’ll make sure to sound as non-threatening as possible. If they are just three meters tall and have never seen a dragon before, I’m certain they would be scared of me.” As he took to the sky, Merlin sent one of her pigeons with him so she could teleport Alcott and the rest in at a moment’s notice if anything happens.

The moment the dragon took to the sky, he completely disappeared. It was truly horrifying to see such a massive creature just vanish out of existence like a ghost. The extreme levels of stealth and sheer violent rampage a dragon could achieve were unmatched. A dragon of DelTaDa’s age and size could easily breathe enough fire to char an entire mountain in seconds, and he could do that after sneaking within inches of his prey.

Wing scales that kill all sound during gliding and work better than owls’ feathers. Patted talons that absorb impacts and silence their footsteps like those of cats, and even have spring joints that work like car suspensions, allowing the dragon to run at full speed without causing a single tremor or vibration in the ground.

Those are the same creatures that can flap their wings faster than sound and cause a rumbling louder than a thousand explosions all going off at once. Even if that was horrifying to witness, to the people of the world, it was a big comfort, as they could see that the dragon was coming and evacuate.

Among all the dragon kind, the ones who are most feared for their stealth are the purple dragons, the spawn of red and blue dragons; they are also known as Plasma Dragons. They are extremely rare, but two have already shown up around Alcott in the past years. The first was Eris, and the second was her father.

Plasma dragons were infamous for sneaking up to cities using the veil of night, flying silently above the clouds while perfectly camouflaged and with all of their magical signals hidden by magic. Then, the dragon would dive vertically down, aiming right at the city’s centre and blasting it with a full-power plasma breath, effectively nuking and erasing it from the map. There is no talking, no warning, no loud roars, just a single blast of pure light and devastation.

But that wasn’t where the scary part about dragons ended; it only started, and their senses were what made them truly unmatched predators. Their eyes, nose, scales, skin, whiskers -yes some got them as well- and their magical awareness.

The orcs had several camouflage tricks and tools to hide themselves. Sent spray, optic camo, thermal detection, and bioelectric sensors. Yet, all of that technology...couldn’t match the breeding selection of power the dragons practiced since the dawn of time.

All of the orcs’ sensors were active; if a fly came within a mile of them, they would’ve detected it. But at this moment, just two meters behind their armored tank, DelTaDa’s titanic nose was; this massive dragon had snuck up on them, and they couldn’t even tell while shining their sensors and cameras directly at it.

It took him barely ten minutes to find them after being notified of their existence on his territory.

”He won’t spook them, would he? Red is prone to just blasting what annoys them.” Alcott sighed, and the white drakaina that was there shook her head.

She shook her head. ”DalTaDa won’t do that. I once came here seeking him as a mate, as he was known as the strongest dragon around decades ago, but I couldn’t find his lair. He was asleep far deeper underground than I could search, so I thought he left. I set my lair here, and only met him when the blast woke him up a few days ago.” She expanded her wings, ready to fly away. ”He just appeared behind me out of nowhere; even as a drakaina, I couldn’t smell or sense him approach.”