The dragon's harem

Since everything here was done, Yog gave Gojo one last look from above the sky of Limbo before leaving, letting hundreds of her angels stand guard in case Entropy decides to have a bit of fun without her. And those angels looked nothing like the normal angels that people knew.

Well, most of them looked normal, but the five ones towering above everyone else looked nothing but alien to knowledge of the mortal world. Those were but a few of Yog’s archons, but all of them were nothing short of horrors beyond mortal comprehension.

The first of the archons looked like a red crystal cube that floated above the clouds, spanning hundreds of meters wide, refracting sunlight into a halo of rainbows.

The second blended well into the pale clouds, and every now and then, a spark of lightning would flash through the archon’s cloudy organs, then roar with thunder as it hovered right beneath the red crystal cube. Those two were sisters, Ruby and Soft.

The third one crawled deep in the sea, a flowing sea of boiling hot tar filled with red eyes and sharp teeth. That archon kept its eyes pointed down, glaring at the depth of Limbo with distressing aloofness. She was Joker, Yog’s spare body and only lacked her omniscience.

The fourth one looked like a ray of light, but it didn’t remain in that shape for long and soon flashed down, mixing into the sunlight. Its body engulfed the entire copied Arctic lands throughout the day, and receded at night. Not much was known about this one as Yog kept its existence a secret.

The last of them was the strangest, because it wasn’t big. Instead, it flew down, ate Gojo’s clothes, and took their place, turning into what looked like a mundane set of dirty clothes. This one was well known, as it was a part of Yog’s wardrobe.

Yog herself went away to work on something before Arad could return and ruin everything. She had to catch her target first, which proved troubling. Those two were racing across the mortal world’s sky, and even Yog found tracking them hard.

She flew through the sky, looking for light anomalies and cracks in the fabric of reality. Soon, she found them, but the moment she did, they were already gone. This was going to be exhausting even for her.

“Grandma… I can’t…” Betty gasped for air, struggling to keep running beside her bright grandmother. It didn’t take a second for a mocking remark to hit, but from someone else. “Aren’t you too fragile for a light wyrm?”

Betty glared back, her eyes glowing white and her head shook. “Said the shadow of one.”

Luminous and Betty weren’t alone; Linda was there as well, easily keeping up with their speed thanks to her time magic. Luminous took Betty on jogs like this often; she needed her to keep her stamina and endurance. While Luminous herself won’t grow weaker by being lazy, that is just a perk of elder dragons, and Betty wasn’t one.

Betty was a halfling, and a lazy one at that. They are the people born retired after all, and almost none of them ever need to work. They spend their lives on farms, watching the sun rise and fall, drinking, eating cheese, smoking pipes, and telling jokes.

In the mortal world, being born a halfling is like hitting the lottery. The first thing you’ll notice is that your parents would’ve already prepared for you a source of income and a house. You might find yourself owning your father’s land, watching over an army of servant golems working the fields, and all you’ll do is take your profit later on.

What’s so shocking about the halflings is that they managed to maintain this generational wealth so well that they even stopped needing a currency, and now only ask for pay from other races; everything to their kind is free of charge. As a halfling, you don’t go buy groceries; your neighbor’s golem brings them to you, and your golem takes a few of your things out to them.

But that didn’t mean they knew nothing. Halflings were masters of magic and spell craft, and the fact that they can learn, control, and command hundreds of golems to work for them was a miracle that not a single wizard from other races is able to mimic. A Halfling kid learns how to make and control those golems as easily as a human child learn their parents’ speech.

Thanks to that lifestyle, halflings had evolved over thousands of years to not care, but only follow their own whims in life, which led them to the study of magic, spell craft, and the arcane arts. Most wizards you find in the wild are halflings seeking excitement, and their talent is known far and wide.

So, if Luminous doesn’t drag Betty every now and then to stress her light magic to the limit, she might let it rust. Linda was only tagging along because she got bored with the mundane life at Arad’s castle without him around.

“Finally caught up with you three.” Yog landed beside them, and they looked at her. “Who are you?” Linda glared at her, but quickly sighed. “Yog, goddess of magic. Or should we call you Lilia?” She didn’t know who she was at first, but then she saw Yog introduce herself in the future and sent that memory to herself in the past.

“Yog, goddess of magic. Nice to meet you, and you can just call me Lilia if that what you want. It’s a more familiar name for the people of this world, right, Bright Luminous, Lovely Betty?” The smile on Yog’s face only spelled trouble, and Luminous felt that and stood between Yog and Betty.

Even though Yog was a half-halfling, Betty felt nothing toward her. There was nothing of that warm spark, that cheerful and cozy feeling of being around her kind.

“Archmage of the wizard tower, what do you want? You’re never good news.” Luminous knew Yog better than anyone else here. She had been a war veteran and knew just how horrifying, cold, and manipulative this goddess could be.

Yog smiled, then started floating upside down. “Luminous, you understood the expanse of light, and that what helped you surpass twilight. Linda, you managed to merge your mortal self with your shadow in the shadow realm, and thus sealed your life outside of time to surpass twilight.” She pointed at Betty.

“But you, little one. You won’t live long enough to become a full dragon and attempt the twilight. So, if you’re to survive, you have to become the first dragon to break through the twilight before becoming a great wyrm.” But she suddenly frowned.

“We’re out of time.” As Yog glared up, Linda paled. “Damn it! Run!” she clapped her hands, sucking them all into the shadows, and then dropped them far away.

What fell from the sky was a mass of writhing flesh, black blood, and endless torrents of dark energy. Yog, Linda, Luminous, and Betty ended up landing further away, staring at the disgusting mass ozzing.

“In short, the Overgod went mad, so his power to protect the universe turned off. Amaterasu is about to take his place, but the transition takes time. In this opening, Nyra is going to take more risks and increase his attacks, even inside the universe.” Yog waved her hand at them. “Run away, I’ll deal with this thing.”

Luminous, who was already as bright as the sun, walked in front of her. “Are you asking a war veteran to run away?” She took a step forward, and the mass of flesh got eviscerated in the blink of an eye as a wave of light washed over it.

What surprised Betty was that her grandmother didn’t use a light attack; she instead ran to the mass of flesh and cut it piece by piece using her sharp claws. It only looked like one flood of light because Luminous was that fast.

What followed next was a wave of darkness that spawned right above the flesh, and the shadows burned with a horrifying dark flame. The mass of alien flesh rapidly aged thousands of years, and most of it rotted and withered away.

Whatever that abomination was, it had no chance of winning against two elder drakainas, especially those two. Luminous and Linda could probably protect the mortal world on their own, and even might be able to hold back against an avatar of Nyar.

And now, those two weren’t alone, but they had Yog by their side, the divine goddess of magic wasted no time and threw the abomination to a dead world and cleaned the place of its landing. Just five seconds after the attack, no traces of the abomination were left.

Betty sighed; she was afraid for a second. She would usually be more composed, but not when a whole goddess shows up to warn them about a threat. But then, something stabbed her from the back, and she coughed a mouthful of blood.

A dark sword through the heart, it was all it took, and she looked down in horror.

Yog, Luminous, and Linda all looked back, and they saw a hooded man in a yellow raincoat standing right behind Betty. “Yog, my love. You can’t see me, can you? You didn’t think I would waste this chance and just send my goons, right? The weakest bug is dead, and now to get rid of those annoying menaces.”

Luminous’s light and Linda’s time magic were the biggest threats to Nyar’s current goals, so he came to kill them first. He killed Betty first because, with her speed, so could run and warn the others.

Nyar was there, and a powerful avatar of him at that. He had felt Cain falling into madness and fighting Violet, so he decided to play his moves earlier than Yog expected and jumped right in. His goals were so clear that Yog had no doubt about them. Kill Violet and steal AO’s core, then find Cain and turn him into an abomination.

So why did he show up in front of Yog and not Violet? The answer was even simpler. She can’t use her full power here or she’ll destroy the mortal world, and he is counting on that to be able to kill her here, and be rid of her annoying surveillance over all of his actions. Three birds with one stone.

Betty fell on her face in a pool of her blood, the shimmering light that engulfed her body started fading away, and she could feel her life coming to an end. Nyar’s attack was filled with strange eldritch magic, and healing magic wasn’t working on her wound, even though she had countless spells cast on her body just for that. Far behind her, a maid showed up from the shadows and started walking, looking at the bleeding Betty with a cold glare.

At that moment, Luminous appeared right in front of Nyar, glaring down at him. She was taller than him, and brighter than the sun. In fact, she was so bright that the entire area around them melted and turned to ash.