The dragon's harem

Everyone reached the village right when the rain was picking up and growing stronger. They had to hurry and rush to the nearest Inn. It was an old building at the edge of the village with a larger stable attached to it. All the people were either inside their homes or in the tavern drinking. No one could work in such bad weather, so Arad didn’t even see any guards around, ending with him and everyone jumping over the Inn’s locked fence gate, as it was only a meter tall. As they rushed toward the Inn’s door, Arad finally noticed the first soul in this ruined village.

A woman, a beggar, rolled up in rags and took cover from the rain beneath the stable’s wall.

He stopped walking, and so did everyone behind him. “Why are you staying outside?” He asked, and the woman slowly moved, her eyes finally spotting him in the middle of the heavy rain.

It was pouring like a shower, and there wasn’t a single soul in the street who could give her money, so she had no reason to stay outside. It didn’t make sense, and what worried Arad more was that she didn’t look all that healthy, just bones in rags and as yellow as a rotten lemon. Gods, he had seen many rotten lemons now that he found out they aren’t the same thing as lime.

“The people inside would rather not see me. And I would rather keep my money.” Just from her voice, he could confirm she wasn’t well.

From his pocket, he pulled a few silver coins. He wanted to give her gold, but that would be marking her with a red dot for all of the thieves of the city.

The coins he gave here were dirty and covered with rust dust, making them look more like copper coins than anything else. For a moment, the woman looked at the few coins with a passive face, and then her eyes sparked when she noticed they were silver and not copper.

“A few coppers, all I can spare,” Arad growled and kept moving. It was only then that she noticed how massive he was as she saw him approach the comically tiny door of the Inn.

Everyone walked past the woman, but two stopped, Alcott and Claug. Both of them looked at the poor woman with not-so-friendly glares. And since those two stopped, Arad froze in his path and slowly turned back, his eyes burning purple.

Silence fell for a few seconds, and the poor woman started shaking. “Why did you stop?” Alcott asked, looking at Claug.

Claug smiled and pointed at the woman, “She smells bad, like horseshit that rotted in mud and puke for a few days. Sour and rancid, quite appalling.” She suddenly disappeared.

In the next second, Claug was already sitting behind the poor woman with her sharp and long nails pointed at the woman’s neck. “It smells fake to my nose. No human can smell like that, unless they are bathing in piss and manure every day.”

Alcott already guessed what Claug was talking about. She thinks this beggar is the draconic general they are looking for. It would make sense; dragons were known to disguise themselves as beggars. But it is the Metallic dragons who do that, not the chromatic ones.

“Leave her alone.” Alcott scratched the back of his head. “I can’t argue your logic, but we have no proof, so putting a human through that is unfair.”

“She could be who we’re looking for.” Claug moved away with a single step. Leaving the poor woman terrified.

“I know, what I’m saying is that any method we have to prove that would leave her traumatised if she wasn’t who we’re looking for.” He shrugged and looked at Arad with a smile, “Don’t know for sure. So we won’t act just yet. They’ll show up, don’t you worry.”

They left the woman and walked into the Inn. Arad barely managed to squeeze through the door, causing everyone inside to cry and take a step back.

“Fucking freak!” An old man grunted, looking at the mug of beer he spilled while getting distracted by Arad.

Arad ignored him and walked toward the Inn owner, who stood behind his desk, acting as a bartender. “Rooms for the night.”

The owner looked at Arad, scanning him, “First, how much do you weigh?”

“A lot,” Arad replied with a smile as he sat down, “But heavier than a grown bull.”

The bartender smiled, “I see, you’re a good one. I’ve got rooms above and on this floor. You’ll take one of the rooms here, the others behind you.” He looked past Arad’s wall-like shoulders.

“Gods, you aren’t alone.” The owner’s eyes stopped on Gamond, Claug, and Balina, who were all almost three meters tall. Dragons with extreme physical strength were known to have huge humanoid forms because it was simply impossible to pack more muscles and bones into a smaller frame.

He pulled Arad aside and whispered, “So? Which one is your mother, and which one is not taken? The one with green hair can step on my face if she wants.”

Arad sighed and grabbed him by the head, “Are you a bit drunk? They are my wives, all of them.”

The owner was indeed a bit drunk, as he had been drinking with the villagers earlier. That is all they could do on this lightless, rainy night.

“Even the bearded one?”

“That’s my father.” Arad let the owner go and leaned on the counter, “The rooms.”

The owner smiled and pulled some keys, “Take a joke. Here are the rooms. If you want any drink or food, I’ve got plenty.”

As they went into their rooms, Arad lay on his bed and split one incarnation out to go and explore the village. Alcott took a whole room for himself, and Arad took the large one with his wives.

“What are you doing?” Claug asked, sitting on Arad’s stomach in her underwear.

“Walking around, right now, I’m watching the owner sell some food to that woman from earlier.” He replied, quickly falling silent as Gamond sat on his right and Kory was with her as well. “You two are…” Both of them were in their underwear, like Claug.

Balina looked at them with a grin and then started taking off her clothes, “Eris, I’m in as well, right?”

Eris looked at her and nodded, “You’re the chromatic princess, so Isdis didn’t have a problem.”

Hearing her, Balina smiled and rushed to Arad, leaving only Zul and Eris standing back. Zul looked at them with a worried face and then at Eris, “Should we really? Here?”

Eris shrugged, “We aren’t in the Inn, Arad already covered the whole room with void, anyone who tries to get inside would be faced with a black wall.” She smiled, “And, I know why you’re nervous. Out of everyone here, you’re the only normal drakaina.”

Eris was right.

Gamond is extremely powerful and has surpassed her twilight.

Kory is a rare temperature dragon with two heads; nothing is like her in the whole world.

Claug is an infamous drakaina, a master of poisons, and extremely strong physically.

Balina is stupidly powerful, extremely rich thanks to all of her soap, and the princess of the Chromatic dragons.

Eris isn’t a true drakaina, but she is stupidly powerful and a demigoddess on top of that.

That only left Zul, a black drakaina that is powerful, but her power isn’t anything special when compared to other drakainas her age. She was a perfectly mundane drakaina. Which only left her feeling like she didn’t belong here, and since the drakainas ranked themselves with power, she was the last.

Eris smacked her on the back, “Don’t stress over it. With Arad around, we’re all equal here.” She smiled, “Because it doesn’t matter who one of us fights him, we’ll get beaten equally.”

Arad blinked, “I see… that woman is heading up the hill. Look at that, four, five, six children, orphans probably.”

Shifting focus back to his incarnation, Arad was hiding behind the old shack, looking through a crack at the woman as she split the food between the kids, leaving almost nothing for herself. He looked at her a bit too much, and now, there were only five children; the sixth one vanished.

“A dragon?” The little girl was already latched to Arad’s back, pointing her long nails at his neck as she glared at him with red eyes. “You smell weird.” With one move, she licked his face and froze, terrified to the bones.

Almost crying, she jumped to the ground and fell, trying to speak with a shaking voice, “Please, please forgive me, God of Destruction. I didn’t know it was you, I wouldn’t have dared to…”

Sadly, she wasn’t the dragon he was looking for, but a harrowing demon masquerading as a harmless girl. Her job was to protect the orphans.

“Calm down, you’ll be fine. I’m looking for a dragon that is hiding here. The one who can take people through the storm to the Star Mountain, I suspected that woman, but she isn’t the dragon, right?”

It took the demoness a while to catch her breath and managed to get a few words out, but she almost shat herself trying to speak. “I don’t know.”

That line itself sounded like a lie. Even if she was telling the truth, Arad would never believe that a powerful demoness like her couldn’t tell a dragon from a human.