The dragon's harem

“Slowly but surely, I’ll fall asleep. For the first hours or days, I can be woken up, but if I were left asleep for months or years, my sleep would grow so deep that I can’t wake up ever again.” She looked at him with a grin, “My consciousness and ego would slowly crumble until nothing is left, and I turn into nothing more than your shadow. My power, on the other hand, would remain in your control.”

“And the catch?”

“I’ll only wake up when you die. I would consume all of your darkness and grow stronger.” She stretched her arms, “That’s how I evolved from a mere shadow monster into a shadow Terror. Find a target, invade their shadow and sleep in it until they die, then wake up with more power.”

Arad’s eyes looked at Ombre, then shifted to Neige, “What do you say?”

“She isn’t lying.” Neige stocked the fire with a few branches, “But… For her sake, I’d suggest you refuse.”

“For my sake?” Ombre looked at her with an evil grin, “You don’t know how powerful eating his shadow would make me. I might even evolve beyond the power of a nightmare.”

Neige sighed, “Listen, you don’t know what I know. The last thing I want to see is a world where he doesn’t exist. You’ll only wake up in a world that you’ll hate, if a world existed.”

Arad listened to those two argue for a while, but he honestly didn’t care either way. As a pricolici, he won’t die unless someone kills him, and even if he dies, Doma is there to resurrect him. Even if Ombre were to invade his shadow, she wouldn’t ever wake up again, and even leave him with a lot of power.

He looked back at his shadow, ^Shadow magic… Didn’t Lala say that the goddess of all life and death lived in a shadow kingdom? That’s why I need a shadow drakaina to guide me there.^

No matter how much he thought about it, Arad couldn’t understand the difference between shadows, darkness, and the darkness of the void. He thinks they are just different levels of blackness?

Shadows are the lack of light in a place. He looked at his shadow, which was slightly dark with light around it.

Darkness was the complete lack of light, like in a locked room. You can walk around and stumble into things. You can even illuminate the place.

The darkness of the void is born from the lack of everything, matter, light, even life. Nothing, even if you were to shine a light in the darkness of void, you’ll still not see anything, just pure, endless abyssal darkness.

He shook his head and looked at the two. “Can you stop arguing about it?” The two were already on the verge of fighting, which wasn’t good with how crammed this space was.

Hearing Arad’s voice, the two gasped and went silent for a few seconds. After giving them a sharp glance, he went back to training. His moves weren’t just for show or repetitive training, he was practicing the moves he’ll need to slay the nightmare. One important motion was a wide swipe, which he kept repeating over and over.

Ombre looked at Arad with hunger in her eyes, his darkness looked like an endless buffet that she didn’t want to miss. After decades of half-starving and only eating the weak shadows of the people living in the city, she had finally found a darkness worth gorging on.

She sighed, stretching her arms. What she ate today was enough to fill her for weeks, more than a hundred humans’ worth of shadows. For the first time in decades, she felt that her body was stable.

She reached down and grabbed the edge of her robe, quickly pulling up. Neige, who was behind her, gasped, almost choking on air. The thing that emerged from beneath wasn’t the black sphere of darkness, but… the black silhouette of a woman.

Neige rubbed her eyes and looked again. Her eyes couldn’t understand what she was seeing, so she reached forward with her hand and touched Ombre’s hand. It was soft and cold, feeling like the hand of a human, but black, so dark and matt that it looked like it was painted in the air.

Ombre looked at her, no expression could be seen on her face as she didn’t seem to have a nose, eyes, or even a mouth. “You okay?” She said, and Neige gasped, quickly pulling her hand.

“You look strange. I can’t even tell where your nails end and where your skin starts… no, where is your face?” Neige tried to look closer, but her eyes failed her.

“Here.” Ombre reached up and pointed at her mouth. Strangely, her hand seemed to merge into her face. Neige couldn’t tell where Ombre’s hand ended and her face started. “I can’t see it…”

“They try to feel it.” Ombre reached down and grabbed Neige’s hands, pulling them to her face. Yeah, they were there, a mouth, a nose, eyes, even a well-defined jaw. “Arad! Come check this out.” Neige called him.

Arad looked back, seeing the black silhouette standing beside the fire. It reminded him of someone… “Yeah… I’ve seen someone like you. But she was the complete opposite, so bright that it blinded anyone who looked at her.” Luminous, Betty’s grandma was the first person to come to his mind. She was engulfed in a radiant, blinding, pure white light.

“A woman made of light?” Ombre looked at him, and Arad nodded. “Yes, a powerful light drakaina, a greatwyrm, probably even older.” What Arad failed to think about was himself. If Lunara were here she could’ve sworn that Ombre looked exactly like Arad’s void form.

“How exactly powerful is that?” Ombre asked, and even Neige looked interested. She had seen the depth of Arad’s power and wanted to know just how terrifying the outside world was.

“Light dragons are the fastest, they fly at the speed of light, which is the fastest speed… it’ll take her less than a second to climb from the labyrinth’s first floor to the last floor where we’re heading.” He said, and the two paled… only Neige paled; he couldn’t see Ombre’s expression, but he could notice her flinch a bit.

“That’s a trip that should take decades if not centuries to cross… The lower floors are bigger than the upper ones after all.” Ombre looked around and then sat down. “But with the bosses blocking the path, it might take even longer. She’ll probably spend a lot to get through.”

“Yeah.” Neige nodded, “You can’t go into the next patch of floors if you don’t defeat the boss, and there are some unfair, powerful monsters there.”

“No, it’ll take her less than a second to reach the upper floor, defeating all the bosses included. Even I could pierce right through the ceiling between the floors if I got my full power back.”