The dragon's harem

It moved, something, and Nina’s eyes jolted open. The sandy sea floor, the tiny shellfish running around, and the glittering bioluminescent algae. Her eyes saw them all, but what drew her attention was something else, something bigger, something greater.

A snake, a titanic sea serpent, no... it was one of the Primordial Kraken’s tentacles. Fifteen meters thick, stretching for several kilometers, and hidden right in the sandy sea bed.

Nina blinked once, and she immediately lost track of the tentacle as if it never existed, which was horrifying. To think a creature in the mortal world could have camouflage as good as that of dragons, but still, that wasn’t enough to escape from Nina. Even if it hid from her eyes, her nose was still active.

The Kraken’s tentacle didn’t go anywhere. It was in the same place. Nina’s senses just couldn’t pick it up from the environment, and she wasn’t smart enough to think around the monster’s tricks.

So, as befitting a barbarian. Nina lifted her massive claw and blindly swung at the ocean’s floor in a massive sweep, aiming to catch anything and everything that should be around. If you can’t find the target’s hiding place, you can just blow the entire place, right?

The ocean boiled at the harrowing force of Nina’s swing, and when her claw hit the floor, the impact generated enough energy to cause a massive cavitation bubble the size of an entire city to form, and then implode on itself in flames.

Feeling one of its tentacles getting absolutely destroyed, the Primordial Kraken finally gave up hiding and decided to fight. Its fear of Arad had faded away as Arad didn’t show any signs of wanting to interfere at all.

Its tentacles all moved at once, ripping through the water at blinding speed, and they hit Nina’s titanic body like whips, aiming to rip her scales off her back and drown her. But that was only the beginning, as the Kraken knew that if it didn’t go all out, it would never win.

All of Nina’s senses flipped upside down as the Kraken’s magic hit her, and she couldn’t even tell up from down, left from right, or her front from her hind legs. Her vision blurred, her nose burned with a strange smell, and her mind felt foggy, slow, and unresponsive.

But that only made her angrier.

Her entire body burned bright red as her muscles expanded, and her rage started. The same way she could enter rage mode in her human form, the same was possible in the Tarrasque form, and it was even stronger.

With one violent swing of her claw, she grabbed one of the Kraken’s tentacles that was wrapped around her body and pulled the entire thing toward her faster than sound, causing another massive cavitation bubble to emerge, the water vapor inside it to separate into oxygen and hydrogen from the sheer friction, and then burst into flames, taking the form of a titanic explosion.

The entire ocean shook and writhed as both Nina and the Primordial Kraken started swinging at each other with unending violence. Waves reached several tens of meters on the surface, and the vibrations even reached the city Nina stepped over as powerful earthquakes.

Arad watched as the ocean floor changed several times every few seconds, and could only be amazed. The Primordial Kraken was a fearsome foe, having lived for thousands of years and fought many great battles. It knew how to move around a stronger opponent, leveraging both its flexibility, harrowing strength, and mind-warping magic.

Nina, on the other hand, was violent, barbaric, and unpredictable. Every one of her attacks was absolutely deadly and would instantly kill the Kraken if it hit its main body instead of just the tentacles. Even though the Kraken’s mind-warping magic worked on her, it didn’t seem to do much, as if she couldn’t aim; she might just destroy the entire place.

She was like a three-meter-tall gator that just had a towel thrown on its head and was now thrashing violently and causing mayhem. Arad could easily imagine Nina as a drunkard going mental inside a bar, throwing tables, punching the air and anyone who got close, and not falling down even when hit.

The Kraken quickly started struggling as Nina’s violent swings eventually started hitting its tentacles and obliterating them like they were nothing. Not even the solid ocean floor could endure her hits, and even Arad himself would lose a limb or two if she were to hit him.

But one thing was clear to Arad, and it was that the Kraken was still wary of him, throwing glances toward him every few seconds just to make sure Arad wasn’t going to jump in and help Nina. The poor monster wasn’t just facing Nina, but its fear of Arad.

So since Arad wanted to see what this Kraken could do, he activated his void presence, completely disappearing into nothingness and leaving the Kraken shocked for a second. But almost immediately, with Arad gone, the Kraken could go all out without fear of getting backstabbed.

Its body burst out from underneath the sea’s floor, and its sharp beak flashed toward Nina’s torso, shooting a massive wave of black ink that immediately painted the entire sea around them.

Nina could feel her entire body screaming in pain; this was the Kraken’s horrid neurotoxin mixed with its ink, which painted the mind black. This thing was potent enough to even affect her, a Tarrasque, and the most frustrating part to her was that her magic-reflecting carapace could not reflect the thing’s mind magic, as it was delivered directly into her system through her senses.

This had exposed one huge weakness of hers. If a spell doesn’t directly hit her, but instead is activated through senses like seeing a Nymph, or through another way like a poison that she breathes, then her magic reflection and immunity are basically useless.

Realizing that, Nina found herself in trouble. She came here to show Arad a great hunt, and a drawn-out battle of attrition wasn’t that at all. She was about to embarrass herself. How could she, the apex predator of nature, struggle like this against a mere fish? A literal spineless being?

What happened next shocked even Arad, as she stopped fighting back, looked directly forward, and opened her massive maw, letting the dead Mega-bloop she had inside fall.

She breathed the water in and spoke in a gargling roar, words that sounded like gibberish since speaking underwater like that wasn’t possible, but Arad, who listened to her mind, couldn’t be more confused.

^By the mountains, shaking upon these forsaken lands. I call on the mother’s name, and her shaking hands. Shadows upon the ground, moving mountains, pillars supporting the world.^

^She is chanting?^ Arad was more than just confused, he was flabbergasted.

^Open! Great old wounds of the Mother Earth!^ With one powerful swing of both of her front arms, she smacked the ocean’s floor.

After a second of dead silence, the seafloor shattered open as a violent torrent of magma and boiling lava burst forth. It all happened in a fraction of a second, and before the Kraken could even understand what happened, its entire body was out in the air, grilling on a whole newborn island of black basalt.