First Demonic Dragon

Chapter 1132: Unshakeable Fear

Abaddon was the first to figure out what was going on.

He looked down at his lap, horrified to find his darling daughter having a seizure.

“Odie? Odie!”

K’ael was also crying for his sister. Abaddon could not quell him as he was solely focused on turning Odessa onto her side.

That was when Abaddon finally noticed it.

The shadows sprawling across the floor were shifting violently, becoming a virtual sea of inky black power.

They converged in the center of the room, where they began to make the shift from the ethereal into something frightening and corporeal.

The room became dark, even with the lights clearly still abuzz. Dimensions shifted in order to better accommodate the rapidly expanding size of the shadowy creature.

Michael tried to back away slowly, but his efforts were in vain.

A clawed hand lashed out and knocked Michael away.

The angel flew across the room and crashed through a nearby wall.

The creature stalked forward on all fours, pursuing Michael even behind the wall.

“Odie! Stop!”

Abaddon appeared in front of the rampaging shadow and held out his hand.

For a moment, the creature paused and sniffed at him with its multiple heads.

A low, rumbling whine escaped its throat

Abaddon held Odessa’s real body in one hand and reached out for her manifestation with the other.

This wasn’t the first time one of the kids’ powers had gone out of control. Though it was the first time that one of them had suffered a seizure from it.

Inside, Abaddon was barely controlling his own turbulent emotions as he tried to help his daughter keep herself under control.

He forced his voice to sound confident and assured. He was a terrible liar, but when sufficiently motivated, he was an adequate actor.

“It’s alright, just keep your eyes on Dad. Nothing and no one is going to hurt you. I promise.”

Abaddon carefully took a few steps towards the shadow. A concern he might spook it made his movements considerably slower than normal.

When he finally reached the shadow, he placed his hand on her center snout and sent a calming aura through his skin.

The shadow seemed to respond to his efforts in kind. Gradually, Odessa stopped seizing.

Her power destabilized and sank into the floor once more before returning to her.

Abaddon held his daughter’s head so close to his chest that it was a miracle the sound of his rapid heartbeat didn’t wake her.

Asherah put down a finally calm K’ael and started to approach Abaddon.

“Tathamet… I’m sorry, I should have thought more before-”

“You should both go… take him quickly.”

Abaddon’s voice was low, but as firm as a steel door.

It hurt Asherah’s heart to hear. But how was she to refuse him after what had just transpired?

She lowered her head and went to her son’s side in complete silence.

He was wounded, but Asherah was able to heal him before a full second even passed by.

After helping him get to his feet, she sent one last look at Abaddon’s back before she disappeared.

The very moment Abaddon felt that he was alone, he collapsed.

His body dropped to his knees as he kept his firm hold on Odessa.

For all of his stature and power, in that moment, Abaddon was only a father who had just been through one of the greatest scares of his life.

Tremors came over his body and his voice. His world felt like it was spiralling as he realized, perhaps for the very first time, just how fragile his youngest daughter really was.

“It’s okay, it’s okay… Dad’s got you… He’s never going to leave your side again.”

–

Children, especially when they are younger, are resilience personified.

They may not possess tremendous know-how, but they make up for what they lack in grit.

Nothing, not burning themselves, falling, putting broken glass in their mouths, or even a seizure, can stop them from playing as they like.

An hour after having a seizure and scaring the shit out of her father, Odessa was up walking around and playing music from her tablet.

Abaddon was watching her carefully, as if he feared that she was going to overexcite herself and end up having a heart attack…

Or maybe even a stroke…

Abaddon’s mind processed things thousands of times faster than even a supercomputer. That meant there was that much more room for him to have anxious daydreams.

“Could you stop staring at her like she’s going to fall into a hellhole and die? You make it hard to sexualize you when you look all mopey.”

Abaddon felt his brow twitch uncontrollably.

He turned to Karliah, who was sitting next to him with a sour look on her face.

“Come on, give Big Mama a smile or something. I’m drying up over here.”

Abaddon rolled his eyes and went back to staring at Odessa.

His patience was uncharacteristically short.

“…I felt her life force flickering, Karliah. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not in the mood to fuel your fantasies, but I’ll happily knock you out so you can dream about whatever the fuck you want.”

“No need now. You just keep talking to me like that and this ooey gooey slip and slide will keep on flowing.”

Abaddon growled at his mother-in-law deeply, and she could finally see that her attempts at humor were having the opposite effect.

“…My bad.”

“You think?”

“Look, I love little shit just as much as you do.”

“Please stop calling her that.”

“-But she’s a tough girl with even tougher parents. She might get a few bumps and bruises, and maybe even give you some scares every now and then. But don’t forget that with all that we are, death is the very least of our concerns.”

Abaddon knew that Karliah was making sense, but he still couldn’t shake his fear.

His life was becoming more uncertain with every day. It was something that he never saw coming in his younger days.

Constants that he had taken for granted were slowly changing one by one. And Abaddon didn’t want Odessa, or any of his children, to be one of them.

*Giggling* “Honey, we’re homeee..!”

A group of twelve slightly buzzed women suddenly came into the living room. The girls were laughing amongst themselves and struggling to stay upright.

It was clear they had all had a fun time that night.

Abaddon put on a smile in the moment, so that he wouldn’t ruin the girls’ good mood.

But Lillian wasn’t drunk at all. And she, in her unparalleled perceptiveness, could immediately tell when her husband was putting on an act.

He had never, and would never be good enough to fool her.

“It looks like you girls had-”

“What happened?”

Lillian’s singular question cut through all of the jubilation in the room.

And that was all it took for Abaddon to come spilling out with the truth.