First Demonic Dragon - Chapter 1008 - 1008: Family Meeting

Dagon lay on the floor without bothering to get up.

He used his arm to prop up his head and watched as two of the beefiest individuals he had ever seen devolved into a full-on slugfest.

He wasn’t sure what had happened in the brief amount of time that he had been unconscious, but waking up to his captors squabbling amongst themselves was not something he could have anticipated.

“I’m sick of you always thinking you’re better than me, you overgrown troglodite!” Satan snapped.

“Oh? That’s a big word for Elmo.”

“Fuck you, die!”

Satan and Karliah’s brawl spilled onto the floor, with both of them seriously trying to maim, or at least cripple the other.

“Stop it, you idiots!”

Sei tried to pull Karliah off Satan, but she lacked the strength to make such a thing feasible.

Eventually, Dagon noticed the sound of additional footsteps approaching and glanced at the doorway with a swollen eye.

“The hell… What are you bastards doing!?”

Three invisible hands pulled apart the trio of dragons and held them in the air.

It had been years since Helios had seemed quite as annoyed as he did now.

He looked towards the floor where Dagon watched this entire mess unfold like a bad sitcom.

“…Family meeting. Upstairs- now.”

–

Once they were in the stairwell, Helios wasted no time in striking all three dragons over the head.

“Are you all insane…? What were you thinking, fighting like that in front of the captive?!” Helios snarled. “Have you no tact? No self respect?!”

Satan scoffed. “These bitches shouldn’t have-“

Helios punched Satan in the nose and dropped him to one knee.

“Show. Respect. This is family.”

Karliah snorted in disdain. “Listen here, gramps, I don’t need any white knights or-“

Helios punched Karliah in the face too.

“Stop being such an insufferable brute all the time. I know you don’t need me or anyone else to stick up for you, but we do it because you’re family. Even if you are a greasy little shit.”

As Karliah wiped the blood running from her nostril, she silently questioned why she had never noticed that Helios was quite the attractive older man.

“Don’t look at me like that, it’s highly unsettling.”

Karliah rolled her eyes and turned away.

Before they fully made their way back up the stairs, Helios paused and leaned against the stairwell.

He ran a hand through his hair in exasperation.

“Look… we’re all on edge. We’re all missing our family. But this isn’t the time for us to start picking each other apart because we’re anxious. Our enemies will be counting on us to forefeit our self-control and we cannot give them what they want even for one second.”

He placed one hand on Sei and Karliah’s shoulders in a benevolent gesture.

“We’re going to get your daughters back. Do not debase yourselves and them by acting out of character until they return.”

Helios’ gaze lingered on Karliah a little bit longer. “…Though maybe one of you could try to act within a different character if you liked.”

Before Karliah could respond, Helios turned tail and exited the stairwell.

The three of them followed behind him while rubbing their heads. Sei was at least grateful that she had managed to avoid getting punched in her face as well.

Helios led them all into the living room, where the rest of the family was gathered.

The only problem was… one more person was missing.

“Where’s the prodigal son?” Satan looked around the room before finding a seat and sitting down obnoxiously.

Mira frowned from her seat across the room.

“He’s… gonna stay with Granny for a little while.”

Satan’s brow furrowed before he let out a disappointed sigh. “So it’s house arrest then. Might be for the best, all things considered.”

Gaia had been sitting in the corner, sniffling and red-eyed this entire time.

Satan’s words had turned her from grieving to murderous. “How is this for the best in any way, you abominable asshhole!?”

“Because you let an emotionally unbalanced god of APOCALYPSES walk out of this house with a chip on his shoulder, and he nearly barbecued every weak little fleshling in Asgard! …I’m only disappointed I didn’t get to see the consequences of such bad decision-making personally. Would’ve been awesome.”

“You fuck-“

“Alright, alright, enough…!” Iori sighed. “None of this arguing helps us get our family back any quicker, so let’s dial it all back for a bit.”

Satan huffed, and Gaia turned away.

Now that everyone was done bickering, Nubia sighed as she looked towards her older sister.

Thrudd lightly petted Bagheera’s head and pulled out a piece of paper for the entire room to pass around.

“First things first…After Nubby calmed down a pissed off Yggdrasil, she gave us a list of coordinates with more of those flowerfields Mom and Aunt Isabelle found.”

*Ahem!*

“…And Auntie Nyx.”

The goddess stuck out her chest with pride.

“There’s over twenty locations here. I want us all to divide and conquer and hit them simultaneously before Percival or Chaos starts trying to move them.”

“Defenses?” Kanami’s brow furrowed as she looked over the paper.

“If there are some, she didn’t mention them, but Yggdrasil doesn’t exactly like our family very much. We’re lucky she bothered to give us anything at all.” Thrudd rubbed the back of her neck anxiously, knowing she had contributed to this family’s blood feud.

“Just… be prepared for anything. We’ll coordinate things so that any reinforcements we run into are too late to do anything of value.” Thrudd warned.

Silently, almost everyone in the house prayed that they would run into reinforcements.

Dragons are not beings who are bastions of pacifism. There was only so much insult they could take before injury became unavoidable.

Thrudd might’ve been the only one who was still a little gun-shy. She was just tired of losing people she cared about.

And as she stole glances at Behemoth, who sat beside her, she prayed that her lover would not ask to go anywhere near this.

But Tathamets are historically unlucky when it comes to finding partners who don’t run right into the thick of danger alongside them. Thrudd didn’t have high hopes that her luck would be much better.

Maybe it fell on her to take matters into her own hands.

“…What about opportunities for study?” Sei suddenly asked.

Everyone in the room glanced at her with anxious looks.

“I know we have samples of the pollen already, but not the whole flower.” Sei reasoned. “That may change things. It could help us determine why they’ve been planted in certain places, and how they reproduce.”

“And why would we need to know something like that?” Darius sighed.

“Why wouldn’t we, you drunken baby-man?” Sei scowled. “Knowledge is power. Even if it seems irrelevant now.”

On that point, no one could really argue with her. But that didn’t make them any less worried about the potential ramifications either.

“If you’re fine with it…” Shin began. “We can help with the retrieval and storage of whatever you need. My men have plenty of training in handling radioactive material.”

A sigh of relief drifted through the room.

“You’re really pulling your weight around here, tin-man! Guess you’re warming up to us scary old dragons, huh?” Hajun joked.

For a microsecond, Shin glanced across the room at Lusamine.

When he saw her staring back at him, he quickly dropped his gaze to the floor.

“…Some of you are alright, I guess.”

Had they been paying attention, no one would have believed the faint blush that tinted the color of her cheeks.

“Alright then. We’re going to be moving in teams.” Thrudd declared. “First up..”

One by one, Thrudd began calling out the pairs that would be travelling around Yggdrasil’s branches and eliminating the flower fields.

Every team consisted of at least one person who would not be affected by the plant spores. In addition, there would be a small team of members of the order who would accompany them to safely extract a flower sample from each field.

Most were satisfied with their assignments, and not everyone was designated to be leaving, but of course, some took issue with the fact that they had been overlooked.

“I believe you are forgetting some people here, mijá.” Mateo reminded gently.

“Make that two.” Courtney folded her arms.

Behemoth would have included herself in the count, but by now she had naturally assumed that she would just be going wherever Thrudd went.

“Actually… you two and the twins are coming to Earth with me.” Nubia said. “We’re going to start looking for Thea there.”

Courtney gripped her leg so that it wouldn’t shake.

Finally, someone was actually letting her do something and not just having her sit on the sidelines because she was one of the youngest.

She may have been a ways away from destroying planets, but she could help too in some way.

And this was just the opportunity she had been waiting for to prove it.

Whoever had nabbed her sister wouldn’t know what hit them…