The dragon's harem

Arad and his wives sat at a table with Lola and her servants, discussing the future relationship between Arad’s empire and the Chromatic dragons. Which land can they nest on, how to move their armies, and many other things.

For example, unlike most kingdoms, Arad didn’t mind the dragons flying their army above his capital. Especially since his empire was so massive that the dragons would need to cross with their army. So Arad managed to get a deal where the dragons need to pay to pass, like all humanoids need to do to cross borders.

As Arad and Lola kept discussing the kingdom’s matters, Eris was busy with something else. She was on a direct call with Amaterasu, who was informing her of the details of her position among the gods.

First, her true divine domain is murder. She is the goddess who watches over all murders in the world, so instead of acting like Katal and encouraging that, she would strive to bring order to the harrowing act.

In short, while she would look like a goddess who guides the dead, she would be leading a massive cult of assassins that works to eliminate threats before they turn into a problem. She’ll also help track murders, bring sinners to hell, and give the divine pantheon a hold over the dark side of mortals.

At first, Eris thought that she would be leading the assassins like normal, only to find out that her domain extended much wider than that. Vampires, werewolves, and every kind of intelligent mortals who feed on other mortals were under her wings. It was her job to make sure Vampires, for example, don’t go ballistic and start enslaving kingdoms like Vlad did.

Of course, not everyone would be willing to submit to her will, and thus, the main offer would be safety. Any vampire willing to follow Eris’s will would be protected from the sun and holy magic, allowing them to live a normal life.

Eris even found herself having to deal with the blood thirsty psychopaths that enjoy killing for fun. They can’t just let those perverts roam the world, and killing them seemed like a waste, so Eris had to herd them into cults so their TALENT can be used to kill people that the gods need dead.

So if any mad killer was out there, they would have the chance to stay away from senseless murder of the innocent and instead pray to Eris to get informed about the not-so-innocent people they can kill.

In fact, it had already started. There was a killer in the far reaches of the high elf capital where Cerilla ruled, and the bastard loved strangling people to death. Now, instead of killing random people to satisfy his psychopathic tendencies, he was gifted a list of names of slavers who were pretending to be lawful citizens while kidnapping children to sell.

That killer will have the night of his life.

Eris’s power and domain extended even further than that. Among the kidnapped children, a little girl no older than ten was being dragged away to be sold. But at that moment, she found her hands awfully close to a slaver’s neck as they tried to tie her down.

She was paralyzed with fear, crying uncontrollably, but then, a voice rang in her head, beckoning her to squeeze the bastard’s neck. As she clenched her fingers, she blacked out.

With glowing red eyes, the little girl’s fingers tore through the slaver’s neck, ripping his head off. As the other panicked and tried to attack her, she killed them one after another.

By the time she came to her senses, she was alone in the forest, a fair distance away from the slavers’ den.

While Kali can send her demons to kill anyone who harms children, Eris can have her angels take over mortals to kill in her name. An angel had taken over the little girl’s body and murdered most of the slaves before running away to safety.

The poor girl didn’t remember anything and quickly made her way to the closest village.

In the capital of the Dark Elves, the Dark Moon Bay, a killer refused to become an agent of Eris. But at that moment, everything around him changed.

He had already killed a man in the back alleys of the capital, but suddenly, the corpse started to move again, standing with glowing glassy eyes.

“You’re alive?” He gasped and suddenly noticed that the corpse wasn’t the only thing acting up. The alley had suddenly fallen silent; all of the cats, birds, and rats had stopped moving and were glaring at him. Even the damned flies were suspended in the air, buzzing in place.

“What’s going on?” He cried, but seconds later, he was nothing but a dead corpse.

Eris can have her angels take control of any weak mortal body as long as a few conditions are met. If the mortal wanted to murder someone, if they were murdered, if they were a vampire, if they had murdered someone in their lives, if they were about to get murdered, and if they lacked the mental brakes that prevent mortals from killing each other.

Eris took a sip from her water mug and sighed, looking at the surface of the water with a long face. She had just realised something, the most terrifying place on this mortal was nothing but the land south.

The Wild Beastlands is where most of the world’s killing takes place; the countless tribes and clans are killing each other by the thousands each day. And there lived more than just beast men who were lions and tigers… There was a humanoid species for each animal and bug… Hati’s forest was an eternal pot of evolving monsters.

“Do you have a moment?” Eris spoke and looked at Lola, “I wanted to ask, how many non-gods divine beings live in the world?”

Lola smiled with a giggle, “Many, I’m one, Mary the metallic queen is one, the same is for Hati, the Nine-tailed Fenrir.” She took a sip of her tea cup, “I’m sure you’re just realising it, but the mortal world is far bigger than what anyone thinks.”

She waved her hand, and the table in front of them shifted to a map of the Beastlands. “Take Hati’s beast lands, from above, it looks like a five-thousand-kilometer-wide forest. But in reality, that is engulfed by Hati’s eternal domain. Inside, it’s over fifty thousand kilometers wide; on the surface, there is a whole underground ecosystem.”

She looked at Arad, “It’s the same with how the Star Mountain isn’t just an island, but it also has this massive rainbow mountain hidden. It is also the same as how your empire has the world inside your stomach to expand it, Merlin’s labyrinths, and the cave systems built by Meryem.”

Eris frowned, “I can’t look too deep into them, but I can guess how large those lands are just from the murders I sense.”

She could also sense the murders happening in other worlds, but those signals were too weak and buffered by Amaterasu. She’ll fully take over when her heaven is established and her angels are ready to help deal with all of the logistics.

Killing is happening all over the universe, and Eris can barely wrap her head around all of the chaos. Even with all of her newfound power, she can’t even begin to comprehend the scale of what she is dealing with.

She then scratched the back of her head, “But, there is one problem I can’t see to understand.”

She looked at Arad, “I’m the goddess of murder, so I can tell when a kill is murder, when it isn’t.” She pointed at him, “For whatever reason, you can’t murder anyone. Kill whoever you want; the universe just shrugs and ignores it.”

“Maybe because your heaven is inside me? Or because you’re my wife.” He looked at her, “I’m sure that you aren’t counted either.”

Eris nodded, “You’re wrong, I can know when a kill murder, not make the moral decision if it’s murder or not. For example, as long as we vampire suck someone’s blood dry, that won’t be counted as murder, just a predator hunting for food.”

She then pinched her forehead and growled, “My head… I’ll think about it later.” She had tried to see if Arad could murder someone, if there was any condition for that, but the universe was basically saying.

“Arad killed you? Tough luck, not my problem, mate.”

She tried to think about Kali, thinking she was the source of that problem, and she got another weird answer.

“Kali? By the gods, just die, do you want to drag me with you to destruction?”

She then focused on herself and got a full list of what could be considered murder and what isn’t. Almost enough to fill five massive books.

The universe itself had a will that the gods must follow, because the universe was the place they anchored their power. Eris was just starting to grasp the idea that the universe, in and of itself, has power and an iron will that it enforces.

Lola looked at Eris, “You might be awake and fine, and I’m sure you have no problem controlling your power. But, don’t make a mistake, the mental load is the hardest to bear.” She pointed at the door, “Go and take a rest, let the thoughts pass through your mind like water through a strainer. Given enough time, the initial load will fade away.”

Eris looked at Arad with a tired, “She should be right, I’m already getting tired trying to understand what murder is. I just tried to think about it, and a library of knowledge was dumped into my brain by… I don’t know who.”

Lola looked at her, “The universe, but it could also be Yog, she is the one who handles all knowledge of the world.”

Arad glared at Lola, “Don’t say her name out loud, she’ll come…”

“And stand on your head!” Yog said, standing on Arad’s head with a smile on her face. “Little Eris, that depends, but for you, it’s me who supplies you with knowledge. If you ever felt that the knowledge is coming into your mind a bit too fast, just tell me and I’ll tune it down.”

Arad took a deep breath and swung his arm at Yog, “Get down!”

Yog jumped away, dodging his fist, and landed on Lola’s lap. “All gods can ping me up if they need to know anything. I pretty much know everything.”

Arad froze, then his eyes burned red, “Where is he then?”

The room froze as everyone stared at him. Lola’s guards and servants started sweating as they got ready, feeling the oppressive and violent bloodlust gushing out of Arad like a rampaging torrent.

Yog smiled, her eyes flashing red and her lips twisting into a massive grin, revealing her sharp, shark-like teeth, “The one who murdered Tyal’s parents. He is on a small world that could be accessed from the fourth layer of hell.”

And before Arad could say anything, Yog pointed at him, “But, don’t just go and punch an extra hole into his body. That world works with different laws; it’s linked to Yggdrassil’s sister, Qliphoth.”