First Demonic Dragon

Abaddon leaned back in his chair after he finished sending out an e-mail to every branch of the military.

In just a few minutes, he was planning to meet with the heads of the science and arms divisions to discuss potential countermeasures.

Perhaps this was the consequence of taking his sweet time in retiring. Unavoidable situations were coming up, and he had no one he could pawn off the responsibility on.

“You look like you’re thinking something shameless.”

Sif sat on top of her husband’s desk and placed her feet in his lap. “Care to tell me if I’m right?”

Her gentle caress served to wrest a wry smile from his lips.

“Not quite as right as you seem to always think you are.”

“So then that would dock me to what? 80% of the time instead of 100?”

“Sure… we can go with that if you like.”

Sif rolled her eyes and switched from the desk to her husband’s lap. Allowing herself to recline against his chest.

She grabbed his arms herself and placed them along her waist as if there were no better place for them.

“Comfortable?”

“Mhm. Just let me sit here for a few minutes.”

Sif’s head slumped backwards, and she closed her eyes blissfully. Abaddon watched her, a flurry of gentle words and thoughts congealed in his heart.

He dimmed the lights in the room so that she could rest more comfortably and reclined back while still supporting her.

For a while, there was next to no sound in the room- only that of the fan spinning around and around while the wooden floors occasionally creaked as they settled.

Abaddon hadn’t realized it, but eventually he seemed to have shut his eyes too. Though he did not fall asleep in that time.

When he opened his eyes again, he found Sif staring at him as if she had never been to sleep either.

“…I wonder if we should have left her there.” She finally said. Her voice was heavy and worry-ridden.

Abaddon shared in her sentiments.

“She made the request, and as her partners, we had to honor it… Even if it currently feels as though we aren’t doing the right thing.”

He seemed to be trying to convince her as much as himself.

Suddenly, the door opened, and Lailah came in wearing an excited smile.

When she saw that the lights were dimmed and Abaddon and Sif were wearing the same pitiable expression, her smile became just a bit bitter.

She closed the door behind them and locked it.

Her heels were kicked off to either corner of the room. Her bare feet stepped lightly upon the wooden floors as she came behind the desk.

Lailah dropped a manila folder on the desk, but didn’t give her lovers the chance to ask about what was in it.

She pushed back their seat and straddled Sif so that their faces were all close together.

“…I miss her too.” Was all she had to say.

For the pair, that was more than enough.

Abaddon glanced past her at the folder she’d placed on his desk.

“That wouldn’t happen to be something else for me to sign, would it…?”

“Our husband’s tired of signing stuff.”

“I really am.” he nodded.

Lailah’s prior proud smile returned slightly.

“We’ve had a small breakthrough.”

Even though Lailah stressed the word small, Sif and Abaddon still got their hopes up in anticipation.

Abaddon sat up. “W-Well, what are you waiting for..?”

“Use small words, please..” Sif pleaded.

Smirking, Lailah reached for the folder and opened up it’s contents for inspection.

“Want the good news or the iffy news first?”

“Whichever one will make me a little less depressed and restore my sex drive.” Sif’s answer was instantaneous.

Abaddon nodded in agreement beside her.

“Iffy news then.” Lailah sighed as she pulled out a sheet of paper. “It seems like we were looking for the wrong things in the wrong places.

The spores we found don’t cause petrification. It’s some sort of a mind and body corruption agent.

The mice we tested it on became rabid, twisted creatures that Shin refered to as: ‘a walking clusterfuck’.”

“So then the spore wasn’t trying to calcify them, it was trying to take over…” Sif gasped.

Abaddon’s brow furrowed. “But that’s impossible because…” His words trailed off, and his eyes were slowly filled with shock.

When he met Lailah’s gaze, he found her already smiling at him.

“Maybe I should’ve had you in the lab with me. We might’ve figured it out quicker.”

Sif grabbed them both by the face. “Would one of you please tell your dumb wife whatever is going on in your big brains?”

Abaddon was still just barely coming out of his stupor.

“The spores didn’t petrify our people. They must’ve done it to themselves.”

Now, Sif was wearing a shocked expression just like her husband. “What? Since when does that even happen?”

She glanced at Abaddon and stuck her finger up his nostril. “Did you do that??”

“Babe, if I did it, do you think that I would have kept it a secret-“

“Right, right, yeah, sorry.” Sif nodded.

Lailah resisted the urge to snicker. “Actually… I think that our Lilli might have done it.”

“”Pardon??””

Lailah smiled at her big, beautiful, dumb partners.

“We gave all of our descendants our blessings, remember?

Now they haven’t had to use most of them over their entire lives, but if they encountered some new parasite that was aggressive enough, and was impossible for even them to get rid of, then their bodies would likely shut themselves down, until or if whatever was plaguing them was removed.

The only reason it’s never happened before is…” Lailah glanced at her husband.

Abaddon didn’t need to hear the rest.

He had created his nevi’im to be incorruptible. Their minds and souls would belong to themselves, and them alone, until the last star fizzled out in the last galaxy.

The general populace’s powers could be siphoned like eternal batteries if someone ever managed to catch them unawares, but every dragon living in this house already bore the virtue of humility. The highest-ranking members of the military, too.

Somehow, their enemies had created some sort of infection so potent that it affected even nevi’im.

It was designed to turn sentient beings against their creators, but Abaddon thought that Percival would settle for the ability to take them out of the equation permanently.

A loud crunching noise occurred out of nowhere.

Sif and Lailah looked down at the arm rails that their husband had turned to powder in his grip.

He smiled in embarrassment as he tossed the remains behind his back. “…Sorry. I needed a new chair anyway, Mira kept getting crumbs in this one…”

Lailah patted his cheek pitifully.

Meanwhile, Sif was doing her best to go over the notes left by Lailah.

“So… if this thing is as efficient as you are saying it is, then how come Nyx, Ganny, and that soldier were all unaffected?” She suddenly asked.

Lailah smiled wryly. “Well, that’s the one little bit of good news… Seems the spores don’t work on beings without physical bodies. Ganny also claims that she didn’t actually touch the homunculus, just set it on fire.”

Abaddon and Sif looked relieved for the first time today.

“That’s…. helpful.” He sighed.

“For now, at least. Yes.” Lailah admitted. “But as we’ve seen so far, our enemies aren’t strangers to progression. They’ve been working their way up to this, starting with Lucifer’s poison, then the wounds Apohis got, and then Kanami, now… we need to put them down before they reach version four.”

She flipped through her folder again and pulled out a sheet of paper with a pie chart on it. “Look at this.”

Sif passed the paper to Abaddon and waited for him to tell her what was on it.

He raised a brow in surprise after just a glance. Only three items on the page caught his attention.

“Two unidentifiable components and anti-magic?”

“Yes, but I doubt that those components are things we haven’t seen before.” Lailah insisted. “Gabbrielle and I theorized that if we tested one of these samples against the water in the spring, we’d get an energy reading pretty damn similar to those runes.”

“And the other component?”

At this, Lailah fell silent for the first time. Sif and Abaddon assumed this was the bad portion of the report.

“…Audrina was certain. She insisted that she could smell the Black Goat on her father’s creation. She has to be involved in it’s makeup, and I need an unaltered sample from her before I can start making an antivirus.”

Abaddon held his head in his hands. “Any chance Mira kept a souvenir after the last time the two of them fought?”

Both Lailah and Sif looked at him like he was crazy. “”You feel like going through her room to search for it?””

Abaddon threw his head back and let loose a groan from the pits of his soul.

Why did he have to be a good father who wanted his children to grow up without maids like normal kids? Why did he want them to know how to clean for themselves??

Lailah smirked as she patted him on his shoulder. “Easy there, big boy. We still have a way to find her that we haven’t tried.”

“Oh yeah, like what..?”

“…”

“…?”

When Lailah was silent for too long, Abaddon opened one eye to peek at her.

He found her staring at him with an angelic, beautiful look of innocence.

A horrible realization dawned on him.

“How much do you love me?” She asked, with a flutter of her eyelashes.

“No.”

“That’s not an answer!”

“Might as well be.”

“Wow, so you really don’t love me. Babe, are you hearing this?”

Sif held up her hands in surrender. “I can’t even figure out what’s going on, but I won’t be getting in the middle unless there’s makeup sex.”

Abaddon sighed. “The only thing that’s going on is that our wife has lost her mind.”

Sif’s expression was blank; still not quite seeing the problem. “But we like ’em thick-thighed and mentally disturbed.”

A rosy blush spread along Lailah’s cheeks. “Aww. Thank you, baby.”

The two shared a small kiss before they turned their gaze towards their husband.

He sighed and reclined back into his chair.

“This… is going to be the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.”

“It’s all for Audrina, my love.” Lailah smiled. “She needs this from us.”

She knew exactly what she was doing. That little bit of information did make the sacrifice seem worth it.

“…Asherah’s going to flip.” He stood up with both women in one arm as if they were as light as feathers.

“Probably, yeah.”

“No doubt.”

He started walking towards the door while planning internally.

The forefront of his mind was just what Yesh would say if he were around.

The man spent several eternities trying to keep Abaddon from the realm beyond the gates, and now he was about to enter voluntarily.