First Demonic Dragon

Chapter 1174: Drift Away

Being in space was strange for Abaddon.

He had spent so many years as the living consciousness of the cosmos that now that the two were separated, he felt a bit awkward being inside of it.

It was like having one of your limbs removed, but still being able to touch it.

He kept waiting for the sensation of touch to light up his synapses, but that didn’t happen.

It honestly made him a little sad. However, there wasn’t much time for him to concentrate on something as unimportant as feelings.

Abaddon allowed his body to drift around the sun’s orbit.

His eyes were shut as if he were already asleep. It was as if he had relinquished all control over his body and submitted himself to the will of the cosmos.

A large, silver box floated in sync with Abaddon’s movements. They aimlessly traveled together through the cold recesses of space for several minutes with no change.

Eventually, there was a change.

It was a discreet, sudden alteration that would have been almost impossible to notice for anyone who wasn’t Abaddon.

The currents carrying Abaddon shifted. He was silently pulled in a new direction, along with the box floating alongside him.

And that was all it took.

’Found you.’

His eyes flashed open, and Abaddon vanished.

– 657 Light Years Away…

A dead moon hung alone in a cold, black region of space.

It was a diseased-looking thing, eaten away by rot into a permanent crescent shape.

Abaddon knew this star sector well. He was the one who destroyed it.

“Oh, no…! You were supposed to let me find youuu…! What if I were indecentttt…?”

Abaddon narrowed his eyes.

Hanging in the middle of the broken moon was a wall of green energy brimming with glossy amphibious eyes.

“I’m not in the habit of waiting. Even less so when it involves blackmail.”

“Ohhh, such an unfriendly term…! I told you, these are deals…! Brokering..!” Yog-Sohoth slurred. “This is all done in good faith…”

“Sure it is. That’s why you took hostages instead of sending me an email like a normal fucking person.”

“We are far from normal, cousin. Very, very, far… Why should we do things as the birds do if we are batsss..?”

“Where are they? If they have so much as a single scratch, you’ll get nothing from me.”

“Oh… can you afford to make that kind of hard refusal…? You haven’t even seen the goods yet…!”

The dark, starless corner of space was suddenly far better illuminated.

Abaddon was suddenly surrounded by sick, twisted watchers glowing with Yog-Sothoth’s sinister energy.

They held gods in their grip. Some burrowed their claws into their torsos and dripped a strange liquid onto their faces.

Abaddon could scarcely say that he had ever seen a sight as twisted as this one.

He stared at Yog with a look of incredulity as dozens of gods called out for him at once.

“You… you have become truly diseased in essence” Abaddon said. “Listen to yourself. Look at the things you are doing! Merging with the timestream has rendered you insane!”

“Ohhh…” Yog let out a small whimper. “Oh, how I wish that were true…! IT ISN’T SEEING THAT HAS MADE ME MAD! IT IS WHAT I HAVE SEEN THAT COMPELS ME SO!”

“Please, enlighten me as to how that could possibly be any different from what I just said?”

“YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!!”

Yog lunged at Abaddon and grabbed him hard by the shoulders. His ethereal green body posed no threat to the dragon, so he didn’t react.

“This plan is my protection! It will be my salvation! I have felt and seen my death, and without your strength, those invaders will find and defile me!”

Abaddon’s ears perked up. “Invaders? What are you talking about, you beast!? Speak plain!”

“Oh, I do speak, but the Red One never listens..! I have seen the deaths of all! The calamitous tide is nearly here, breathing down our necks! You can’t feel it, I know you can’t, but Yog can see it! Yog sees all!”

“…You’re really erratic. I never thought you would actually be dumb enough to come this close. And to think I wasted all that time planning.”

Abaddon suddenly lashed out and grabbed Yog’s ethereal form.

The horror screamed loudly as if Abaddon’s touch burned worse than acid.

Abaddon felt waves of agony flowing off the creature in waves. He did not necessarily take pleasure in it, but he didn’t pretend to be bothered by it either.

“Answer me! What do you know about them?!”

Despite Abaddon’s attempt at interrogation, Yog was quite unresponsive and quite unhelpful.

His patience ran out. If Yog wasn’t going to help him willingly, then Abaddon could always rip the information out.

“Grit your teeth.”

Abaddon tightened his grip on Yog.

Suddenly, the horror’s screams became dramatic howls of pain as his very essence was forcefully pried open and invaded.

But at the same time, Abaddon’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as his body began twitching.

Abruptly, he let go of Yog and brought his hands up to his own head.

Throwing his head back, he let out a horrible yell that easily reached the faraway lands of earth.

–

Time is dangerous. Looking at it, meddling with it, and changing it all come with their own dramatic consequences for the unprepared.

It can’t be handled by careless hands or less evolved beings.

Even impatient dragons are not exempt from the ramifications of it’s rage.

Space and time are synonymous with one another. But for billions of years, Abaddon effectively ignored that part of himself because he knew what fusing with it would take from him.

He wanted to be a present man. A present father.

He couldn’t necessarily do that if he was constantly seeing every single moment of his family’s lives all at once.

How would he explain it to Thea when, on her 300th birthday, he couldn’t stop his own tears from falling because he was still living in the moments where her powers hurt her as a child?

On the night of his anniversary with his wives, he could be witnessing a time before any of them had even met each other, and they were all seeing different people.

Abaddon thought that he already had enough issues that made him imperfect. He didn’t need to add becoming the embodiment of time to that list.

Even Gabbrielle had long put a hard cap on that level of her abilities.

But while he had considered the psychological ramifications of becoming the metaphysical personification of time, he had never thought much about the neurological.

Most foolish beings who attempt to unanchor themselves do so when they are young. 1,000 years or so.

Abaddon was already over ten billion years old. He had lived through three different timelines and been reincarnated thousands of times.

And he was also Oblivion. A Xeno-Dimensional deity beyond the bounds of this and every universe.

The weight of his past, present, and future, combined with the weight of everything’s past, present, and future and struck him all at once.

And unlike Yog-Sothoth or even Kronos, there was almost nothing strong enough to obscure his vision.

He was a being of overwhelming, supreme power.

And yet, as he was now, suddenly being imparted with that volume of information was too much for him to swallow at once.

He screamed, but his screaming overlapped with the same screaming he had done when he was a child.

He reached for Yara’s breast to quell his childish agony, but in many cases, it was not Yara. It was someone else.

He didn’t recognize them, but he did recognize them. They were his mothers, but they… they did not look at him like his mothers did now.

’Ah… that’s right… I was deformed…’

Abaddon felt the weight of all of his past lives’ physical and mental impairment all at once.

His body felt tight and constricted. His capacity for thinking was diminished considerably, and yet he was connecting millions of different thoughts and experiences all at once.

And then it hit him. The reason he was insane in his past lives before Carter and Exedra was not because he was still infected. It was because of this very moment.

With that thought in mind, Abaddon turned his thoughts in a completely different direction through sheer willpower.

Not wanting to change anything in the past that would affect Carter and Exedra, he turned his gaze outward, beyond himself.

He saw the beginning. He saw the end.

He saw seven figures riding forth in waves with great armies. All of them were completely unlike anything Abaddon had ever seen before.

But what baffled him the most… was the fact that they seemed to be able to see him as well.

–

Abaddon’s screaming was so maddening that it briefly rendered Yog-Sothoth sane.

The eldritch horror looked around and realized that this was the perfect time for him to flee with his prize.

He rushed towards the silver coffin Abaddon brought with him, and threw it open.

The creature shuddered happily. The body was glorious, and power flowed off it in waves, even with no soul inside.

“Perfection… With this, I can-”

Yog-Sothoth was shocked when the body opened it’s eyes. All three of them golden and righteous.

Before the creature knew what was happening, the body sat up and punched him as hard as it could.