The dragon's harem

Arad and his shadow danced around Darkness, deflecting and keeping Linda’s harrowing attacks at bay. If she knocked the tenebrous woman down, all of the darkness around them would vanish.

Linda’s attacks were fast; they accelerated and decelerated through time, making them extremely hard to predict. They could even hit before she threw them, which took a lot of Arad to figure out.

If Arad and his shadow wanted to stand a chance against Linda, they had to start predicting her moves way too early and act before she could even attack.

But even with him and the shadow standing their ground, Arad was worried about another thing. He knows Linda can accelerate someone’s time, or even turn them back into a dying fetus. Until now, she hadn’t used that power on him, which meant she was keeping it as a trump card.

Arad is a void dragon; he could freely manipulate the threads of space, but to him, the threads of time felt like an endless ocean. It was like he was standing in the middle of water. That water’s temperature keeps rising steadily, and that is the flow of time.

Arad didn’t feel the time flowing in any direction; he felt progressing and changing with each passing second. Time flows in the same place, but into the future.

When Arad moves the threads of space, they disturb the water, force to shift and twist with them. Time reacts to them, but not in its natural flow.

If Arad stirred the threads of space in their place and forced them to rub against time, he could accelerate it. But if he used them as a fan to spread the flow of time, he could slow it down.

As the fight with Linda progressed, Arad observed her every move and how they affected time. It was astounding. She seems to be his exact opposite.

Linda could see the threads of time clearly, and the threads of space looked like an ocean to her. By swimming in any direction, she could change her physical location.

This wasn’t a fight between two dragons anymore; it was a fight between space and time. They clashed like two angry torrents, ripping each other upon each contact.

It also didn’t take Arad long to realise that Linda’s control over time is far stronger than Arad’s control over space. She was an Elder time drakaina while he was merely an Adult void dragon.

It didn’t end there either. Linda’s time manipulation far surpassed all of Arad’s expectations.

The first thing Arad realised was that Linda’s attacks could hit in the present, future, or past at her will. Everyone else must fight in the present, but she wasn’t.

The second thing was that her attacks were strange; multiple of the same attacks came out, sometimes even overriding Arad’s blocks. They hit as if he failed to block them, which was weird.

But the third thing that scared Arad the most was that he wasn’t fighting one Linda, he was fighting multiple versions of her, each from a different timeline. Read complete version only at novel{f}ire.net

Arad couldn’t even dodge Linda’s attacks because she was smart, and instead of aiming at him and his shadow, she focused all of her attacks toward Darkness, forcing Arad to take a defensive stance.

Arad knows that he won’t last long under relentless assault, so he has to figure something out soon.

Being outclassed like this wasn’t all that bad, Arad knew that better than anyone. As long as it’s not Nyar, he can see a winning chance. He only had to pull his weapon, and it wasn’t the dragon slayer. It wasn’t even the exploding nipple knife; he pulled Mira’s staff.

Linda saw the staff and jumped away from him. She had seen that weapon before when he first showed it to them right after arriving in the fortress. It was an artifact made and blessed by multiple gods, holding enough power to amplify Arad’s magic.

Linda didn’t know what kind of magic Arad wanted to use, but she knew that it might not be wise to take it head-on. The last thing she wanted was to get slapped by a young one.

Arad’s shadow returned to him, turning back into just a mirage of Arad’s moves. Darkness followed right after, but instead of disappearing, she screamed as her void body turned into a sword and landed in Arad’s left palm.

The darkness engulfing the place never faded away, but Arad didn’t need it anymore; it was just there to buy him a second or two.

As Linda backed away, Arad pointed the staff toward her, and his void magic swirled out.

[Time Slow] Using Mira’s staff, Arad tried to slow time as much as he could. He needed to put as much of a strain on the fabric of time as he could. As expected, Linda tried to fight back, tugging on the thread of time to accelerate it back to normal.

Arad knew he would lose this tug of war, but he didn’t need to win; he only needed to struggle as much as he could, and struggle he did. Linda was even surprised by how much resistance he was putting up.

If she didn’t know better, she would’ve thought he was an adult time dragon and not a void dragon.

“A tear in reality.”

“A collapsed star.”

“Six threads ripped apart, pulled by nature.”

By the time Linda turned around, it was already too late. A second Arad was behind her, having already released a roaring blackhole the size of an apple at her.

With the fabric of time being already too strained by the clash between Arad’s [Time Slow] and Linda’s time acceleration, it crumbled alongside the fabric of space when the blackhole hit it.

Linda tried to slow time and escape, but she couldn’t. There was no time fabric for her to use, and so she found herself getting sucked into the violent whirlpool of the blackhole like a ship falling into a sinkhole.

The fabric of time was shattered, so her time magic was useless, and since not even light can escape the gravity of a blackhole, her shadows were no better.

Linda threw her arm forward and sent a tendril of shadows, catching the two Arads. “There are two of you? Stay right there and don’t move!”

Arad grabbed the tendrils and tried to rip them apart. “Let go of me! I’m sure you’ll be fine, you’re an elder time drakaina.”

“I said, don’t move! Stay there until I climb out!” She yelled at him, her eyes burning red. What Arad didn’t understand was that he had ripped a hole in the reality of his stomach. If this doesn’t get patched soon, he might collapse onto himself like a dying star.

Linda knew that she had to get out and repair the fabric of time before it’s too late. But that was easier said than done. Resisting the gravity of a blackhole wasn’t easy, even if it was small.

As Linda slowly crawled out, something also crawled out of her shadowy tendrils. Arad’s shadow glared at her for but a moment, then swung his arm at her, stabbing her with the nipple exploding knife.

Linda’s nibbles exploded with enough force to rip both of her arms off, sending her tumbling into the depths of Arad’s blackhole.

For a moment, nothing happened. The blackhole rumbled in place, and there was no trace of Linda anywhere.

Arad had won. But he then felt something soft pushing on his back, two hands wrapped around his head, and something cracked. All of his incarnations, at one, had their heads torn off.

When Arad woke up, he was floating alone in the void. Linda was sitting on his chest, using him as a boat as she drifted into nothingness. “I can teleport to the past as I want.”

She sighed, “You should’ve won, but I didn’t die. I came back when the fabric of time fixed itself an hour into the future, so I teleported to the past from there and killed you. We’re in that future now, so an hour had passed since the blackhole sucked me and I snapped your heads.”