The dragon's harem

The shadow drakaina opened her eyes inside a massive cave, but not one that she was familiar with. Around her, she could sense the shadows of thousands of titanic ants crawling around.

What did happen? Was she smashed to the ground so hard that she fell into another cave? She didn’t know, but the shadow above her was somewhat familiar.

Arad was standing in his draconic form just above her head, looking down at her with burning purple eyes. “You’re finally awake? It’s been almost an hour.”

“Where are we?” She asked, and Arad looked around, “My laid, for location, north of Alina city in Ruris kingdom.”

“I can sense some titanic ants and kobolds running around. Are they your minions?” She cracked her neck and looked around, walking around the large cavern.

“You can say that, but don’t treat them like minions. They are more than that.” Arad looked around with her.

“Call me Grace, and you should be…”

“Arad, just Arad.”

“I wasn’t going to add anything to your name.”

“That was a precaution for what you’ll learn later.” He sighed.

As the two walked across the massive cavern, they quickly reached a smaller cave that led them into a room where a dead whale rested on ice.

“You eat first. I’ll check on some things outside.” He then pointed back, “And don’t go into the back caverns.”

She nodded as she approached the whale, “That’s where you keep your hoard? Are you keeping any explosive scrolls there?”

Arad laughed as he left, “Of course not, but beware, the thing hiding in there isn’t something you can face.”

Grace looked toward where Arad kept his hoard and then shook her head, returning to her food. He had warned her about Kali, but she still ended up almost getting killed. She wasn’t stupid enough to ignore his warning twice. Who knows, he might be hiding another monster shadow inside.

After finishing her food, Grace sat down to think about what she should do now. Arad is clearly brainwashed by that child horror. With her current power, she had no way of winning such a fight. Her only hope is to find a way to convince Arad that everyone is already dead and that the reality he sees is just an illusion.

But to achieve that, she must first find out why Arad is the only one who is still alive beside her. She was a shadow dragon, so it meant a sense that she could retain her sense of self in a world of shadows, but what about him?

She had seen Arad’s shadow and already figured out that he had grown older since she had last seen him. He had become a titanic dragon that was more than a kilometer long. Mating in their draconic form wasn’t an option thanks to that, unless she wanted to end up dead.

But that wasn’t all that she noticed about Arad. What had become clear to her was that he was far more muscular than what a dragon should be, far larger than his age shows, and what horrified her the most, is that he is far lighter than other dragons who are smaller than him.

Since all of Arad’s organs are stored inside his void stomach to keep them safe, his body ends up being far lighter than it should be. This also played a huge role in how fast he could accelerate, which explained a lot of his power.

She also paid close attention to his claws and scales, the purity of magic coming out of his body was unmatched, as if he trained to control every single scale and masterfully calculate how much mana he could use and where to get it out for the best effect.

It also didn’t escape her attention that his claws were enchanted like those of witches, so he was technically a witch, a he-witch. Whatever, the style resembles what that plasma shadow had, which meant she was the witch who enchanted his nails.

If the two of them fought, what could happen? Let’s just say she managed to kill Kali, could she endure Arad’s assault until he regains his sanity? Probably not, he could one-shot her with a single punch.

“Let’s fix that.” Grace stopped eating and turned into a shadow. She then formed a shadow body. She then used her polymorph to make it look exactly like herself.

What she just did was swap places with her shadow, letting a shadow clone be the one talking with people and fighting. This would allow her to instantly teleport away through the shadows if things got dicey. And just to be safe, she made another clone and sent it away in the form of a tiny shadow that was no bigger than a fly.

Once the tiny shadow reaches a safe spot she will be able to escape whenever she wants.

Now that she had a failsafe plan, she had to think about another terrifying fact. This meal of hers, the delicious, fatty whale, and the ice around it.

“Hmmm, a greatwyrm white drakaina? The shadow of one?” She didn’t know that there is something beyond a greatwyrm.

After inspecting both the whale and the ice she found out that it wasn’t a single drakaina, but two. A mother and her daughter hunted the whale and froze it in ice.

“He has a daughter with a white drakaina? A greatwyrm and he is able to make her go hunt for him? How in the… no, the daughter doesn’t smell like him at all, she isn’t his daughter. Did he take both the mother and daughter as mates? The first thing a dragon does is usually kill any offspring that his mate had before him. He should’ve killed and eaten that daughter. Or the reverse, kill the mother and keep the daughter as a mate.”

With each passing second here she is discovering more and more terrifying facts about Arad, which drew her mind back to his hoard. What is there for him to warn me about getting inside?

After a while, curiosity got the better of her and she went to take a peek. Just a tiny harmless, and innocent look.

She finished her meal, shifted into her dark elf form, and rushed across the massive cavern until she reached the large iron door to Arad’s vault, where he keeps his draconic hoard.

She slowly opened the door and looked inside, only to be instantly blinded by radiant light. A naked woman who looked in her early to mid-forties stared back at her with a gentle smile. Her opal skin sparkled with rainbow hues of light, her burning golden hair danced on its own like a ghost, and her eyes were so blindingly white that she was almost shooting lasers from them.

There was another being beside Arad that she could see normally, or rather was forced to see them almost normally.

“Poor child of shadows.”