The dragon's harem

Falling into the light-less darkness beneath the ninth layer of hell, Eris looked back at ceiling above as it faded away from view. She had never expected anything to be beneath hell, but here she was, falling into a darkness that not even sinners deserve being thrown into.

The only two sources of light were Eris and Amaterasu, looking like two stars in the middle of the absolute nothing. Small, but still a clear target. The shadows silently stirred in the absolute darkness.

“What if they aren’t hiding here?”

Eris could tell that this place was vast, searching it whole could take days even for a goddess as overwhelming as Amaterasu. Wasting time here could lead to Nyar’s goons escaping.

Amaterasu shifted slightly as she threw a glance down, smiled, then turned back to Eris.

“I came here for two reasons. Find the abominations and teach you to use your power. So if they aren’t here, I would just get you to learn a few things.”

Amaterasu’s eyes flashed red as her Kimono burst into flames. Her light exploded outward and in the next moment, she was wearing a full armor of boiling golden plasma.

Unlike mundane armor, this one flowed and moved around her body like liquid. It clung tightly to her skin, applying her figure as well as making sure everything is covered and fully protected.

“This is the weakest type of protective magic I can cast. You should be able to use it as well.”

Amaterasu started flying around Eris, showing her each corner of the armor from behind the knees to her armpits and groin. There was no weak point to that armor, full-body protection at all times. She could even pull a helmet that didn’t even have a visor but still allowed her to see. That way, she looked like a blinding golden silhouette.

She then went on to explain how Eris should pull power from her sun and coat herself in that plasma, compress it with gravity, and make it take the form of an armor.

The details were too complex and Eris found it hard to understand what nuclear pasta is, even though Amaterasu told her that it’s matter compressed beyond normal means.

Eris tried to make an armor several times but kept failing. Each time she failed, a massive explosion erupted from her and Amaterasu was just there, taking them like morning breeze, until it clicked in her head.

She can learn from Amaterasu, but not mimic her. To make that ability her own, she called on her Death Butterfly form.

Eris’s purple plasma erupted from her body and covered her in a massive cocoon. Now that she became a goddess, that form’s power had far surpassed its limits. If she was to pull this one in the mortal world, the ocean might evaporate.

Surrounded by radiant purple plasma, Eris emerged from a cocoon wearing a robe of plasma and with massive butterfly wings emerging from her back.

Amaterasu looked at her with a grin for a second smiled.

“Mind if I inspected you for a bit?” She approached and Eris nodded.

Unlike Amaterasu’s armor, Eris’s Death Butterfly form didn’t cover everything. When she looked closer, cracks started showing up.

“First, your feet. They are bare. I like seeing them, but in a fight, you better cover them up.” She flicked her toenail, “Especially since you’re a witch and rely on them to cast some spells.”

She then looked up, seeing her knees, thighs, lower back and belly, then chest and neck.

“Listen, the armor’s thickness varies a lot, and it doesn’t even cover your stomach. Come on, try to control it better. Leave the skin for Arad. Now, those wings of yours, do you really need them? She touched the wings. “I take that back, they help radiate excess heat and control the plasma alongside your hair, clever.”

“Not bad, not bad. Still, try to make a proper armor. Cool fits are important, but not as much as not losing your head, in your case, losing your toes and belly.” She approached her and whispered.

“Getting disemboweled hurt, and having your feet crushed, frozen or pinned down by divine spikes hurt as hell. So, you better get covered up.” She patted her on the shoulder and turned around.

“You said it’s your weakest protective magic. What else do you have?”

Eris looked down at herself and sighed. A bit disappointed in herself. This armor work against mortal who would die just from the sheer heat, but against divine beings, it’s awful.

“I have two types, and each type has countless ranks and versions based on which sun I use as a base for that power.”

Amaterasu dismissed the armor and returned to her kimono. The change happened so fast that Eris didn’t even catch her changing. Amaterasu seemed to catch her gaze and smiled. “Sorry, you won’t see me naked. You’ll die.”

“That armor was made of the weakest sun I control. That also mean I can use stronger suns to make the armor denser, heavier, and stronger.”

Stars are just distant suns, and among them were harrowing titans that not even the gods dare approach. But, the ones who are Amaterasu’s strongest, are small, spanning just few dozen kilometers in diameter.

Behind her, Amaterasu summoned one of them. A thirty kilometer wide, pale blue star so bright that for a second, Eris was about to get blinded.

Amaterasu looked at the sun behind her with a grin. “This is a radiant blue star, Yog calls them neutron stars. I have a few billion of them around. This one is the smallest, and it weighs like a couple million mortal worlds.”

She licked her lips. “Once more, your sun is a grain of sand, this one is a whole beach.” She then looked at her. “Do you know I can see anything beneath the sun? People play a lot in beaches, especially behind the stones. They think no one is watching.”

A stream of blue matter flowed from the sun and surrounded Amaterasu, molding into a suit of armor. “Better material, better armor. I can also make weapons.” She pulled a sparking hammer engulfed with lightning, then quickly threw it back into the sun.

“So you’re trying to say that the better I make my sun, the stronger anything I do will be?” Eris took a glance at the neutron star and smiled.

“You’re smart, so this should be easy.” Amaterasu flicked her fingers, causing the neutron star to disappear alongside the armor. “Gather matter and give it to Arad when he returns, have him crush it into pure energy then craft it into the smallest type of matter he could. It should be a flammable gas in regular temperature.”

She pointed at Eris’s chest. “Take that gas and feed it to your sun to make it grow bigger and stronger. When you reach certain size, the sun would change, so I’ll come and teach you how to deal with it.”

Eris closed her eyes and called her sun out. When the sun appeared, she frowned. “I always wanted to ask. I only have one sun, how come there are more than one? One in the mortal world’s sky, one in Arad’s stomach, and here I pulled a third one.”

Amaterasu looked at her with a smug smile, puffing her chest out.

“You do only have one sun, it can only exist in one place.” She approached her, then pointed at the sun that Eris pulled. “What do you think? Guess on your own.”

Eris froze.

“Wait… don’t tell me…”

Amaterasu shrugged. “Those other ones are mine. Each time you took your sun out, I replaced it with a similar one and gave you a link to them. That way your angels won’t die, and the people in the mortal world won’t think you’re dead.”

At first, Eris was a mere vampire, and thanks to her blood, Amaterasu spared her from the burning sunlight. That was the first time she helped her.

She then became her paladin, and thus gained immense divine power to freely use, even though she wasn’t as devoted as Lydia.

Eris than became a demi-goddess of murder, and Amaterasu was the one to help her control that portfolio by empowering her plasma into a purple sun.

Even now, when Eris had finally became a full fledged goddess, Amaterasu was still supporting her, going as far as using two suns to assit her.

All this time, Eris tried to grow stronger so she won’t need Amaterasu’s support anymore, but each time she grew stronger, the power she sucks out of Amaterasu only seemed to increase, never grown smaller.

“Wait! Two suns, that’s double my power. No, when I’m not fighting, I have two suns, one in Arad’s stomach and the other in the mortal world, so am I always wasting a full sun of your energy just like that?”

Amaterasu shrugged. “Each second, that sun eats more divine power than Lydia used in her entire life.” She leaned back. “But… I don’t want to sound rude or arrogant. That’s amount is nothing to me. Your entire power, all that divine magic, it’s nothing more than a drop of water in a thousand oceans.”

Amaterasu had over a billion trillion suns all around the universe. Each and every one of them is a vestige of her power. Out of all the gods, she alone doesn’t need worshipers. A near endless well of divine energy rests at her fingertips, and she isn’t stingy with it.

“Don’t worry about being a burden on me. Because honestly, no one can ever be.” She flew in and patted Eris on her shoulder. “I take that back. Tiamat once became a painful burden, so I had her be my… forget I said anything. She is Sena’s mother after all.”

Eris took a few seconds to think about it with herself. There was nothing she could do to solve this problem. Without Amaterasu’s help, she’ll have to pick between having a heaven or a sun in the mortal world to be worshiped through.

She can turn off the sun in the mortal world and only rely on murder, but that would slowly consume her. Without Amaterasu’s support, Eris won’t be able to remain herself and would have to become an personification of murder.

Eris hated nothing more than ending up like Katal was, a monster that had his cults massacre people all around the world to gain power. For now, she has to accept Amaterasu’s help.

“I get it. Thank you.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s get back to how to feed the sun. Do I need to have Arad convert matter? Can’t I just throw it directly into the sun?

Amaterasu smiled, glad that Eris easily accepted her help. “You can, but it’s extremely inefficient. The second best thing you can throw in is water, pure water. Or what, are you worried that you’ll become a burden on Arad?”

Eris faintly smiled. “Yeah. He’s already busy all the time, I don’t want to give him more work.”

Amaterasu nodded with a grin. “I see, I see. And since he already has too many wives, bedtime won’t be enough to pay for the trouble. But don’t worry, it’ll serve as a good practice for him as well.”

As the two were talking, something flew at them from the depth of the lightless void, a massive mass of slithering flesh, bones, tentacles, and raging waves of white ooze.

“Guess we’re low enough.” Amaterasu looked at the thing and pointed a finger, summoning a whole sun and dropping it on it. As the creature burned and screamed, getting pushed far down by the raging sun, Eris frowned and gulped. Amaterasu could really just pull a sun and drop it on someone’s head like it’s nothing.

“What was that thing?”

“A primordial horror from the dawn of time. But don’t worry, it’s not an abomination.” She smiled. “Those are AO’s failed attempts at creating the gods. That one was supposed to be a divine being of fertility, life needed such a thing at the dawn of time.”

“That’s a god?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I said failed attempts. Those are mindless monsters. If Nyar wanted to capture Stillness, he might be planning to use her power calm their rabid minds and turn them into his puppets. So we’re hear to inspect the place.”