First Demonic Dragon - Chapter 1146: How?
Chapter 1146: How?
K’ael watched as his sister continued to drift within the realm of unconsciousness.
His sister had been pulled into their father’s lap while she slept, almost as if she were a mere child again.
’Embarrassing..’ K’ael shook his head.
“Hm? Is something the matter, my little bro-bro boogie bear?”
While judging Odessa, K’ael had forgotten that he was in his own predicament. Struggling within the iron-clad grip and large, springing chest of his second-oldest sister.
“…I am happy that you are home, elder sister, but I must admit that I find the use of cutesy names to be difficult to deal with.”
Thrudd eyed her brother for several moments while blinking.
“…You’re just like Bashie! My two little thesaurus-knowing cutie patooties!”
Across the table, a slightly older and more muscular Bashenga put down his glass. “I will thank you very much to leave me out of your insanity.”
“Never!”
K’ael believed that he now knew what marijuana cigarettes felt like. He had been passed around so much that he was starting to get dizzy.
Everyone wanted to get a closer look at him. Everyone wanted to hug him and know what he had been doing for the past fourteen years.
They wanted to get to know the young man he had become.
But K’ael was of the shyer sort. He could only answer things in short intervals, which meant his parents and his grandmothers were usually reduced to answering the more complex questions for him.
Though there were some instances where questions teetered over a dangerous line.
“Hey, boy! You found a nice lady to tickle your pickle yet, or does your great uncle have to take you to get some-”
“DARIUS!” Lailah snapped.
“Oh, my bad… Well, have you found a nice boy to-”
Bekka punched the old man in the jaw without looking up from her bowl.
With the dwarven dragon collapsing to the floor, the family smiled and laughed in earnest.
The family wasn’t truly back together until Darius was saying something inappropriate and getting punched for it.
These were the kinds of interactions they had sorely missed in their time away.
While eating and smiling, Abaddon’s heart was incredibly full.
Not only his family that came from the depths, but even those who had gone on adventures had come back stronger than before.
However, there was one among them who was more unrecognizable than all the rest.
Abaddon glanced out of the corner of his eyes at the woman sitting beside him.
Short, hastily cut black hair. Red eyes that sparkled like crystals in the moonlight.
A long black scar ran over the left side of her face and gave her a rather fierce appearance.
Her body was like his used to be. Completely covered from the neck down in tattoos.
She looked like a full-fledged adult. And for Abaddon, who had last seen his daughter on the back end of her teenage years, the end result was so jarring that he felt like he’d gotten punched in the jaw.
Courtney had been shoveling food into her mouth and enjoying her first meal in forever.
When she noticed her father staring at her, Courtney paused with two fistfuls of dinner rolls in her mouth.
“…Wuh-wuh?” (Want one?)
Abaddon placed one of his hands on his daughter’s overstuffed cheeks and smiled at her fondly.
“My darling girl has gotten so big… How long has it been?”
Everyone at the table heard his question. It caused everyone to fall into a bit of silence.
“…Sorry, I asked something difficult.” He realized.
“No, no, it’s fine.” Courtney said when she swallowed. “The answer is probably different for each of us, considering just how funny time is… but you know how the nightmare realm works.
It feels like eons when you’re inside of it, but you feel like only a day passed when you look back on it… 10,000 or 100,000, take your pick. Just know you owe me a lot of birthday cakes.” Courtney went back to eating.
Abaddon’s eyes went beyond his daughter’s flesh to the depth of her soul.
Her entire being was big. Large enough to enshroud the earth. Dense enough that nothing could ever penetrate it.
For Abaddon, who remembered his daughter as a fledgling dragon, this change really was too much to wrap his mind around.
“So I have to ask… how did you all do it?”
Valerie had dove right in and asked the question they had all been avoiding.
There was plenty to catch each other up on without delving too much into the unpleasantness of a millennia-long fight with the oldest evil in creation.
But now that someone had actually brought it up, the curiosity everyone felt could no longer be ignored.
“Well, Azathoth isn’t really dead, for starters…” Apophis began. “In the same way energy can’t be destroyed and can only change forms, his body seems to share that property. We had to inflict the bastard with enough harm so that he couldn’t get his thoughts together and he couldn’t draw on his limitless power.”
“We cut him into tiny pieces and made these pills out of him.” Thea held up something small on the tip of her finger.
If you didn’t possess a near microscopic level of sight, it would have been easy to overook. It was significantly smaller than even a crumb.
Abaddon could see the dark aura surrounding the small pill. Just that tiny bit of matter held the same amount of energy as a high-ranking archdemon. He wondered how strong it would make his soldiers if they consumed it.
Hell, who was he kidding? He didn’t have to wonder. He could already sense the results for himself with just a thought.
It seemed like the end war was going to be more and more lopsided in their favor.
“Honestly, the hard part was figuring out that we weren’t going to be able to kill him and we needed to find another way.” Jazmine sighed exhaustedly. “But luckily, little destroyer junior over there brought something pretty handy with her.”
Courtney flipped her sister-in-law off as she shoveled more bread into her mouth.
It took a moment for Abaddon to grasp what she was implying, but once he did, the slight smile he showed was warm and proud.
He ruffled Courtney’s hair as if she were still just a little girl.
“I’m glad that old thing was able to come in handy.”
Belloc suddenly put down the glass he was drinking out of. “Yeah, about that, is there any reason why the rest of us don’t have an overpowered weapon from all of you?”
Abaddon and his wives looked at each other.
“I think you’re forgetting that Courtney was human when we gave her that sword.” Lisa reminded.
Erica nodded. “She needed something brutally unfair to protect her. We thought the rest of you would be perfectly fine on your own with your natural abilities.”
“Sounds like favoritism..” Straga grumbled.
“I also thought it sounded like favoritism, but I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t overreacting.” Belloc whistled.
“You’re both overreacting.” Eris rubbed her eyes. “But still, it’s nice to have you back, dramatics and all.”
Izanami looked down at her wristwatch when she noticed the light beginning to flicker.
“Oh, umm… seems it’s about that time…” She scratched her cheek.
The wives seemed to stiffen at her words and developed wry, uncomfortable smiles.
Everyone at the table seemed to notice how awkward things had suddenly become.
“… We’re missing something here?” Satan used his spoon to gesture to all of the women.
“There… might have been some more changes around here while you all were away.”
“More grandbabies?!” Asmodeus asked hopefully.
“No, we’re done with kids now…” Audrina waved her hand dismissively.
“I know… It’s menopause, isn’t it?”
There was an audible crack as Sif punched Satan in the jaw so hard that his head spun around his body like a corkscrew.
“A-Anyway… We’ll show you, but not to be too surprised.” Izanami sighed.
Suddenly, all of the women disappeared from their seats.
Ayaana and Zahara appeared beside Abaddon’s chair, but to everyone else, who hadn’t seen them in a while, their changes were something to make them sit up straight.
Thea pointed at one of her mother’s with a bewildered expression.
“Why in the world does that woman have my face?!”
“You mean aside from her being our mother?” Nubia raised a brow.
“…Oh yeah.”
Zahara’s breathing became heavier and heavier.
Her cheeks became flushed with red, and her eyes abysmally frantic.
“My.. my babies…! They’re actually here, and they’re so healthy, and big and strong and grown up and I… I… I…!”
Zahara fell to her knees while holding her head up to the ceiling. She proceeded to release a genuine cry of emotion from the depths of her soul.
“I CAN’T HANDLE ITTTTT!!!!! I’M A MOMMYYYYYY!!!!”
Twin fountains of tears burst from Zahara’s eyes and landed in her husband’s gumbo.
As the entire room shook with the weight of Zahara’s motherly love, Odessa finally woke up.
She took a single look at her mother and the shocked faces of all of her siblings, and she knew exactly what had happened while she was unconscious.
Silently, she closed her eyes again and decided to ’wake up’ in a few minutes when everything was under control.
