First Demonic Dragon

Isabelle felt her stomach sink to the bottom of her shoes.

Her ears were ringing like doorbells, and her mouth was painfully dry.

Her nerves were in a constant state of shutting down and setting themselves on fire all at once.

Air wouldn’t fill her lungs the way that it was supposed to.

But she still somehow managed to stammer out a few words that were barely louder than a mouse’s laughter.

“W-…What did you say…?”

Her father did not budge or repeat himself. A fact that emboldened great anger within her form.

The world around her burned away, replaced by a bright red landscape.

All she could hear were the echoes of the mother she lost, and the face of the man who had taken her from her.

Her visage split apart, becoming a rabid, dreadful thing to behold.

On black wings as big as twin towers, she shot into the sky.

Her rage propelled her like a great force. She struck the barrier separating them and tore through it with razor-edged claws.

At her impending threat, the twisted ships floating around in the atmosphere began to merge together into one.

They became a twisted thing- a homunculus of abomination, the likes of which was nearly biblical to behold.

Dark, eldritch energy flowed off the creation in waves. The infected denizens still appearing out of holes in it’s skin obtained a similar malicious energy.

On the ground, Audrina felt her conflicting emotions collide in an explosion that froze her completely.

Her immortal mind was not immune to shock or trauma. And matters of the heart are often the perfect method to bring about a total lapse in focus.

“…dy… My lady!”

L’asir was failing to get throuh to Audrina through his voice, so Nyx raised her hand to slap her on the butt instead.

Audrina’s reflexes caught her before her hand could connect.

“Oh good, you’re awake. Now what do we do?” Nyx replied in a rushed tone.

Audrina hesitated to answer. Her mind was a jumble with possibilities, and her nose was filled with the cursed scent of goat.

An explosion shook the sky.

Isabelle’s initial clash with the homunculus was as loud as thunder through a loudspeaker.

Audrina knew that her sister was not the strongest of dragons. But she was most disconcerted to see that a construct was capable of matching strength with her.

No… the longer the two forces stayed interlocked, the more Audrina began to see that her sister was the weaker of the two.

The infected creatures crawled from the surface of the homunculus’ skin and latched onto Isabelle.

She roared in frustration and immolated herself instantly.

As her entire being went up in violet flame, the creatures screeched in agony. Dying and returning to the very ashes from which they once came.

But it was insufficient.

Dagon stood atop the head of the homunculus, his figure unmoving. His arms remained folded across his chest as he stared down at his former daughter with unveiled contempt.

“…Revolting creature. Across the multiverse, dragons are twisted, gluttonous curs of the sky and heaven. But the foulest of you has always lurked below.”

“SHUT UP!”

Isabelle opened her mouth as wide as possible. A torrent of flame spilled out from her mouth- the combined energy and heat of over 1,000 new suns.

Dagon drew his cape over himself.

Somehow, the unimposing fabric he carried managed to protect him from a violent death.

Finally, Dagon’s brow wrinkled.

“This accursed strength that flows through your black heart… Was it worth it? Was it worth selling your soul as a noble vampire to be like them?”

“WHY WOULD YOU KILL HER!?”

“If many have considered me a man willing to do anything for power, then I do so wonder what the realms would proclaim about you and those like you.”

The humunculus grew a new arm out of his fleshy mass and held Isabella’s mouth closed forcefully.

Like a bomb had gone off, Dagon and his homunculus were suddenly under siege.

A cosmic storm swirled into existence out of the vast cosmos.

From out of it came darkness, pure and absolute.

If one looked closely, it had the visage of a woman with eyes like violet nvas and no mouth to speak of.

From behind it’s back, two bat-like wings unfolded from behind her back.

If the starry cosmos was a tapestry to behold, the stars, the moons, and the suns would be the splashes of paint that were brushed onto the canvas to give the grander tapestry legibility, then the darkness between those splashes was starting to bleed over the entire canvas.

Some would say she was dreadful. Others would label her as beautiful.

All would call her frightening.

Including Dagon himself.

He temporarily forgot all about Isabelle as Audrina reached for him.

The vampire could not see her movements, but he could most certainly feel their looming impact.

Her very first strike would claim his life. She no longer seemed to be bound by the same sentimentality as she was the first time she spared him.

He considered that to be a good thing. He didn’t really need it anyway.

“Come to save her again, have you..? Those old habits will certainly be the death of you…!”

– (Previous timeline: Several hundred years before Exedra’s eighteenth birthday…

The sound of strikes landing against flesh was apparent in a stone-lined room.

A figure slid across the floor on her back. Holding her injured arm and biting her lip so that she wouldn’t cry out.

“Don’t whimper. We start earlier tomorrow if you whimper.”

A thirteen-year-old Isabelle fought back every impulse in her body. Shakily, she swallowed back her cries and got back onto her feet.

“…If this were a true battle, you would already be dead. You don’t heal well enough for your movements to be this slovenly. It frankly insults everything I have tried to teach you.”

Isabelle dropped her head. Too afraid to look up at her father once again.

In moments like this, Dagon’s dislike of his daughter only grew. He despised his daughter for her presumed weakness, even though he was the cause of it.

His attempt to purge weakness from the girls’ lives and his own had borne mixed results. Some metal was just too fragile to withstand heavy tempering processes.

“…I’ve no idea what it will take to get through to you. You exhaust me irrevocably.”

Isabelle hung her head even lower. The words landed against her ears like hammers on an anvil.

“Don’t worry about her anymore.”

The two turned to the corner of the room where another figure stood.

This one was in better condition. Less damaged.

A fourteen-year-old Audrina with a cold, rigid personality, just like a block of ice.

“You don’t have to bother bringing her here anymore since she’s so weak. I’ll be your heir.” Audrina professed.

For a moment, their father said nothing. His eyes scanned his daughter, looking for a single trace of weak sentiment.

He was pleased with what he found.

“…Alright then. I will allow it.”