First Demonic Dragon

Lillian held her heart to the sky as it beat even outside of her chest.

She muttered to herself while in something of a trance- her mind barely focused on her surroundings.

Lillian wasn’t like her husband or wives.

She still felt pain.

When she personally guided a soul to their final resting place, she felt the pain of their death with every fiber of her being. It’s why she hadn’t actually assumed her duties in a few years now.

Just as with death, sacrifices hurt.

The pain of removing her own heart was excruciating.

But Lillian could put up with anything if it meant that the woman she loved wouldn’t lose a sister. As a monarch, it was also her duty to do whatever she could for her subordinates who were in a bad way.

She crushed her heart like a water balloon and waited for waves of agony to knock her unconscious.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, Lillian felt her heart regrow inside of her chest almost instantly.

Her wound had even closed up, leaving her with nothing else to show for her attempted sacrifice.

“This… Can’t be…” Lillian looked crestfallen, before another light of hope shone in her eyes.

She reached for her face, but Audrina stopped her before she could mutilate herself again.

“Just… stop it.”

“M-My love, let me try… I-If I sacrifice my sight for a few years, then I’m sure that I can…”

Audrina’s lip trembled.

She hung her head as low as it could go and wept silently in the arms of Lailah.

Her sister was over ninety percent calcified already. And she was running out of hope that anything they did was going to be able to save her.

She didn’t want her loved one pulling out her eyes for a plan that wasn’t going to work.

“…What if we rewound time a bit?” Lailah suddenly offered.

Audrina couldn’t stop crying long enough to give her an answer, so Nyx had to step in.

“Time, it’s… funny here. Events seem to flow normally, but they aren’t anchored to reality. From a spiritual standpoint, it’s like the past doesn’t exist here. Just the present and the future.”

Abaddon was forming a massive migraine.

With time unanchored to the realm, neither he nor the others could gaze back into the past, and they couldn’t travel there either.

They were running out of options. Running out of time.

“I-I’m sorry…” Eris wept silently. “I-I’m trying, but I can’t… I can’t fix anything…!”

Audrina embraced her and the two of them cried together. Their heartache was felt by everyone around them.

Abaddon couldn’t go on like this. Not if he didn’t pull out all the stops.

So he swallowed his pride and shut his eyes so tight that they nearly bled.

He opened his mind, and for the first time in this lifetime, he prayed.

–

“…You do much reading, Abaddon? I’ve been doing a lot, and I gotta say, I think I prefer Absolute Superman to the regular version.”

Abaddon narrowed his eyes as he stared down at Oblivion.

His alter ego was nose deep in a comic book, lying on a sofa with headphones over his ears. How he was listening to music and Abaddon at the same time was something the dragon wasn’t sure of.

And right now, he didn’t really care.

“I need you to teach me how to do that thing.” He said seriously. “Or at least give me the power to do it.”

Oblivion looked up from his comic book and stared at Abaddon with one eye.

“…We should read ‘The Poppy War’ too. I keep hearing good things about it.”

“Don’t fuck with me right now!”

“I’m not. I’m saving you. Saving us.” Oblivion went back to his comic book. “It’s no wonder we married Lillian. Our tendency for self-sacrifice fits so well with hers that we should be sharing a sacrifice divinity.”

“Oblivion!”

“Oblivion!” he yelled back. “I’m not giving you the power to make absolute laws. However powerful you think you are right now, your soul cannot possibly sustain it.

If I fed you that much power, you would eviscerate yourself and take at least ten thousand realities with you. Not to mention, as fragile as Yesh is right now, your little explosion would probably kill him.”

Abaddon never thought that he could hear so many words that he didn’t like at once.

He began pacing back and forth impatiently, raking his hands through his hair.

Suddenly, he paused.

Oblivion put down his comic book and took off his headphones. “No.”

“What about Mediae?”

“Didn’t you just hear me say no?”

“Gabbrielle told me a long time ago that the union of Aether and Nether creates Mediae, and it’s one of the prerequisites for becoming an Aeon. She said that energy creates unparalleled phenomena and-“

“Yes, but you can’t exactly become an Aeon anymore. You’re a budding Egoless. The only prerequisite for ascending to our peak is age and exposure. I feed you a drop more of our power, day by day. That has to be enough for now.”

“That won’t save my sister-in-law.”

Oblivion started to open his mouth, but bit his lip before anything came out.

It was an act that did not escape Abaddon’s notice.

“…You know something.”

“I know almost everything.” Oblivion corrected.

“Start babbling.”

“Like you, I have laws to which I am bound. Some very stringent ones, I might add. I can’t tell a lower being anything about his aeon, or the secrets of his timeline.”

“And what happens if you do?”

“By chance, do you remember when we were children and Kanami would knee us in the nuts for eating her candy?”

“Every time that I close my eyes.”

“Picture that, but on crack. And this time the kick is coming from a xenodimensional entity of balance.”

Oblivion wasn’t the only one wary of Balance.

Frustrated, Abaddon sat on the floor with his head in his hands.

Oblivion put down his things and stood up. He sat by himself and held his knees up to his chest.

Abaddon’s voice was low and dangerously empty. “… Why does it feel as though, despite all of my power, I am utterly helpless to do anything that matters?”

Oblivion sighed. “…When we are unified, you will learn about the universal constants of totality. The more powerful a being is, the less they can do with that power. Obstacles are deliberately thrown into their path that they have to climb around, not blink, and make them disappear.”

Abaddon glanced at Oblivion out of the corner of his eye.

“… Are you saying there’s a way around this current obstacle?”

“I’m saying that right now, Audrina needs us… Because we can’t save her sister today. Nor our people.”

A feeling welled up in Abaddon’s chest. One that was so foreign to him that it almost made him sick.

Defeat.

The word stung his pride and made him feel as though he were going to be sick.

He was simultaneously burning up with anger and brooding.

“…I think… I chose the wrong year to start walking on a new path.” He sighed.

Oblivion was inclined to agree, but chose not to tell him that.

“If it’s of any comfort… this fate was not the worst one that could have occurred.”

Abaddon didn’t know if that was Oblivion’s way of trying to comfort him or not, but it didn’t really help at all.

–

By the time Abaddon opened his eyes, it was already over.

He was staring at a stone statue- or four of them, to be exact.

Isabelle’s eyes were shut. She looked like she was sleeping peacefully.

But Audrina knew that was far from the truth. Her sister’s last few moments had been in a pained, weakened state.

And that thought sickened her.

She wasn’t even able to touch her sister in her last moments.

All that she could do was sob violently on Eris’ shoulder.

Her sobs turned to screams, and her screams made her anguish manifest.

The light produced by the sun and stars became insufficient to light this universe.

They progressively became dimmer and dimmer, until the entire plane was a permanent dark nightmare realm.

Audrina continued to cry until she had no strength left.

She didn’t want to be moved. She didn’t want to leave her sister’s side.

For the longest time, she was only vaguely aware of the presences around her.

Her loved ones were trying their best to comfort her… but for the first time in her life, they just weren’t enough.

They were supposed to start a new chapter. Begin a new sisterhood.

She was finally going to get the chance to make up for all of the awful things that she had said and done over the course of their life.

But now what?

She could not even manage the most basic duty of an older sibling- protecting the younger one.

For the first time in her life, Audrina realized a painful truth.

She hated herself. And she had no idea how she was supposed to go on from here.

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