The dragon's harem

Chapter 2049: Dark Tentacles

Early Author Note: I decided to stray as little as possible from the early draft, and so, this is modified a bit, but only about 10%. The core idea is still the same.

Surrounded by the army of Death Butterflies, Arad’s void turned darker, and as he smiled, it expanded outward to form a second incarnation of himself. But that wasn’t the end, but where the horror itself started.

This incarnation looked exactly like Arad, but its eyes were replaced by hollow orbs of pure darkness, its skin was marred with black veins, and dots of sharp scales could be seen faintly vibrating with magic as they erased the air touching them.

Inside Arad’s stomach, deep within the darkest reaches of his void, the titanic, transparent soul of AO reflected the darkness of his void, and then, a stream of power burst downward like a waterfall.

Kneeling beneath that flow, Baal’s body burned with power, and he stood, the muscles on his body growing tighter with each move, and he looked back with eyes burning with darkness.

Standing beneath AO’s great soul was an army, an army of billions of dead souls barely holding their form thanks to AO’s will, and they were all waiting to be granted a void body and emerge as void creatures under Arad’s control.

At this point, Baal knew that Arad had become aware of himself being AO, and he, too, had decided to keep the secret for now. His only goal was to keep Arad safe, and keeping a secret seemed the best possible way for the time being.

As he fully turned around, those souls all looked up at AO’s soul, and then, one of them moved. They stepped forward, and the flood of void rushing down from AO’s soul granted them a form of pure darkness, one made of absolutely nothing.

Then, everyone else moved forward to get a body, all under Baal’s watch.

But there were a few of them who didn’t need AO’s help to get a body, extremely powerful beings that could will themselves back into existence, of course, as long as they were allowed. And from them, Baal only allowed one to come out, since it was possible that Arad couldn’t fully control any of them at his current stage.

It will take time, and a lot of power to give the entire army bodies and bring them out to fight the butterflies, so Baal was counting on this horrifying, eldritch being to buy them enough time and matter to convert into energy.

And thus, behind Arad’s back, tendrils of pure darkness emerged, and the gods above almost shat themselves; even Amaterasu and Kali were horrified at what they saw. The only one who seemed to have one was Yog, who already knew about what was going to happen.

Those black tentacles, that yellow coat, that nasty eldritch magic, and that extreme level of concentrated hunger. What stood behind Arad was an Avatar of Nyar, one of those that AO’s Nymph killed not long ago. Of course, AO wasn’t going to let their souls go back to Nyar’s true body and power it up, so he consumed them to fuel Arad’s age cultivation.

”What?! That incarnation had just transformed into an avatar?” Amaterasu growled, ”Since when? Why that form?” Not for a single second did they believe this was a real avatar, and what they thought was that Arad just changed the form of the incarnation he summoned to look like that. Which was wrong, Arad just pulled that incarnation first to mask the fact that he was pulling such a thing.

”Use those tentacles to protect me, and bring any corpses here for me to eat.” Arad growled, and the avatar glared at him. ”For fuck’s sake... Father is going to be pissed. But... being severed from him is a nice change.”

Tentacles burst from beneath Nyar’s coat, and they lashed out in a deadly storm. The nearest butterflies were immediately struck down and killed, their corpses getting dragged closer by a few of the tentacles as hundreds more extended even further to widen the safe zone.

”I see...” Kali growled, ”The butterflies aren’t that strong individually, but there are a lot of them. So Arad needed a lot of small attacks with fine control to not waste energy, and while shaping the void into tendrils or arrows would cost him more energy than just changing the form of a single incarnation.”

Arad could already use eldritch magic, so the avatar having it didn’t trigger any alarms, especially when it looked to be far slower and weaker than what an actual avatar would be able to do. But in reality, all of that was just an act; the avatar had its full power and was just limiting himself enough to look fake.

So why isn’t this avatar using his power to kill Arad now and free himself? Is he afraid that Amaterasu and Kali would attack? Is it something else? To answer that, the nature of both AO and Nyar had to be brought forth first.

AO is a creator; he has the power to forge a new reality and create a universe within the confines of his own body. He had gone out of his way to create something out of nothing, then let life blossom inside it. He is a being of reality.

Nyar, on the other hand, is a consumer, a parasite that feeds off the work of others, and he had set his eyes on AO’s universe. He couldn’t create a universe from scratch and could only invade, infect, and consume someone else’s work. That’s why all the universes that abominations invade eventually die; they cannot create, only consume and destroy. He is a being of nightmares.

So, in a sense, AO ranks higher than Nyar in power, and Nyar knows it. That’s why he fears him, and that fear had been shared with all of his spawns, what the gods and mortals call the abominations.

Every single abomination and avatar is born with that fear; they are horrified at the mention of AO because Nyar himself still has PTSD from their earlier clashes. That’s why, usually, when severed from Nyar’s main body, those spawns lose that fear, and with it, their drive to fight AO back.

That’s why every time AO offers any abomination safety and refuge in the universe and cuts them away from Nyar’s influence, they switch sides. Their endless nightmare has ended, and the calm reality awaits them.

So while Nyar is a parasite that eats away at AO’s universe, AO is a parasite that eats away at Nyar’s people.

It is easier to imagine the abominations as a band of bandits, with Nyar as their leader. They are nomads, going from one village to another, ransacking them for food and shelter. But after days, those villages are no longer suited for life, and the food had run out, so they moved to the next village.

So then, one day, a king who rules a massive and powerful kingdom grabs one of the bandits, takes them inside the walls of his great kingdom, gives them food, shelter, and a job, and even grants them protection from the threat of their former leader, so they take that deal immediately and live a stable life.

This avatar had now been pulled into the safety of the universe. Of course, he was still a sentient being that could turn on Arad at any moment if the chance allowed it, so that’s why Baal only allowed one to go outside while Arad was weakened.

Arad had already done the same before with the likes of Damnation, so this wasn’t entirely new, just on a whole other scale, only made possible by AO’s recent appearance.