The dragon's harem

The gnomes watched from afar as fire engulfed the whole cavern where Ganta and the shadow drakaina went. The stone melted into red lava, and the ceiling shook, almost crumbling down.

The shadow drakaina survived the blast but not without sustaining a large wound. She might’ve been immune to damage while in her shadow form, but the light from the breath ripped her shadow apart and wounded her.

Ganta wasn’t in good shape either. Her whole body was now bleeding, and she was holding on to the last strand of her life. Largely thanks to how powerful Arad’s scale was. It put such a deadly pressure on her.

She looked forward, and from within her blurred vision, she saw the drakaina charging a shadow breath. If that breath hit her, it would rip her shadow apart and kill her.

Ganta smiled. She had already pushed her body over its limit. In fact, she had survived two direct hits from a powerful drakaina, one she was sure was powerful enough to kill her with a single swipe.

This situation reminded her of how her father died. He survived against an adult black dragon long enough for the whole clan to escape and then died of a breath attack.

But it was then that another shadow appeared between her and the shadow drakaina. A large, gaunt man with broad shoulders and a faint beard on his face. Arad had finally found her.

****

A few hours earlier, Arad had just teleported beneath a quicksand pit to open the back entrance to the brown dragon’s lair, but he immediately noticed that something was off. The whole lair was a trap, shrouded in shadows and led directly into the Shadow Realm. It felt like jumping over a pond of water only to land in mud.

It was a strange feeling, like drowning in oil. All of Arad’s senses had shut down, his magic failed to work as it used to, and he felt an immense pressure crushing him down. This wasn’t the drakaina’s power attacking him, but the power of the Shadow Realm rejecting his presence. He wasn’t a shadow, so he shouldn’t be able to cross to the Shadow Realm.

Thankfully, Ombre was still with Arad, so she managed to help him navigate the shadows and swim back to the surface. But that process had taken quite a long time, and it would’ve taken him far longer if she wasn’t with him.

After escaping the grasp of the shadow realm, Arad found himself in the middle of the earth dragon’s lair, locked behind several layers of spells and traps. None of them could harm him, but he didn’t want to just blast through as he found traces of life in the dragon’s lair.

Arad had tried to look for Ganta the moment he escaped, but he didn’t find her. He didn’t even know that she was whisked away by the shadow drakaina and thought she was just standing outside where he left her.

The shadow drakaina pulled Ganta into the first dragon’s lair, and Arad was ejected from the shadow border into the lair of the second dragon several tens of kilometers away.

Since Arad didn’t find Ganta, he went around looking for traces of the shadow drakaina, and he did find something- the corpse of the dragon that lived in this lair.

A large, wingless brown dragon with scales of stone, massive fangs, and a bulky, muscular body. When Arad looked at the dragon’s corpse, he noticed that something seemed off. He couldn’t understand it at first but quickly realized that he would never understand the problem in a dark cave.

Arad illuminated the cave and quickly found the reason he felt disturbed. The earth dragon’s corpse didn’t have a shadow. Ombre warned him immediately that while she could help him navigate the shadows and understand them, she might not be able to withstand an attack from a drakaina that could snuff the shadow of a dragon.

Arad immediately stored the dragon’s corpse in his stomach and started looking for Ganta. He crawled outside and directly inspected the area where he left her.

He noticed the last two footprints she left, the faint smell of her sweat, droll, and tears on the ground, as well as the marks on her knees. He even found a few drops of her blood on the grass.

Ombre quickly found that Ganta must’ve suffered a direct shadow attack and got whisked away. While Ombre inspected the magic, Arad looked around and determined a few things. First, he didn’t emerge in the dragon layer he tried to infiltrate, but in the second lair. Ganta was far down underground, beneath several kilometers of stones and dirt.

As Arad focused his senses down, he could see Ganta swallowing his scale and starting a fight with the shadow drakaina just outside the gnome’s hole. He didn’t have any time to waste, so he teleported immediately to save her.

****

The drakaina froze as she saw her breath hit Arad’s wide back and splatter like water hitting a stone.

BAM! BAM! BAM! Arad’s heart started beating loudly as he looked at Ganta’s bloodied body. Her words had come true, and when Aella knows of this, she’ll kill him.

The shadow drakaina immediately stopped wasting energy on her breath and lifted her massive claw, putting all of her willpower and magic into one order given to Arad’s shadow- to destroy itself.

Waves of red and black shadows surged around Arad’s massive body. His muscles glistened, and his eyes flashed purple as his shadow shifted and convulsed. He didn’t look bothered at all, and instead, the drakaina was the one who started sweating as if she carried a heavy stone on her back.

Arad called Eris and pulled her through his stomach to heal Ganta while he slowly turned back to the shadow drakaina. “Now, to deal with you.”

The shadow drakaina had tried to control Arad’s shadow, as she did to all of the gnomes and even Ganta. The ability she got when growing older was far too overpowered, allowing her to kill anyone who got in her way, as almost no one had resistance to shadow magic.

She wasn’t wrong. Even Arad doesn’t have any resistance to shadow magic. Ombre is too weak to face a shadow drakaina, so why wasn’t his shadow bending down? It was simple, sheer size. Arad’s shadow was massive, far larger than hers, a reflection of a greater being, a dragon that was beyond all other dragons in power.

Arad had once again found himself facing the Mad Shadow Drakaina.