This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

The abyssal dragon did not slow until it reached the scar.

It tore through the sky like a wounded beast fleeing into its den, its translucent body flickering violently as it poured what little source energy it had left into speed. The air screamed around it as the boundary of the world stretched thin, reality splitting apart along a jagged vertical wound in the heavens.

Up close, the ‘scar’ was far larger and more intimidating than it had appeared from afar.

The sky there was split open, layers of the world peeled back like wet parchment. Color failed first, bleeding from blue into bruised purples and sickly blacks that churned slowly, as if stirred by an evil breath from the other side. Along the edges of the tear, faint crackling echoed continuously, not lightning, but the sound of incompatible laws grinding against one another.

Aurem followed.

With every meter he closed in on his fleeing target, the world grew heavier. The air itself seemed to compress, not slowing his movement but pressing against his body and senses alike, as though the closer he drew to the ‘scar’ that led to the abyss, the more the surrounding space struggled to accommodate something that did not belong on this side of the breach.

The abyssal dragon glanced back, panic sharpening when it saw how close Aurem already was.

“Mother!” it cried, voice tearing free in raw desperation. “Mother! These insects that don’t know what’s good for hem imprisoned me! Boohoo! Then when I finally escaped, he attacked me! He beat me! That big golden bug—!”

The cries reminiscent of a complaining toddler lacked all dignity.

It plunged headlong into the scar.

Aurem was about to cross the final stretch—and stopped.

Something changed.

The moment Aurem reached the edge of the scar, the pressure around him vanished—and was replaced by something far worse. The space beyond did not push against him or resist his advance. If anything, it seemed to welcome him in.

But he was not fooled into entering. Not when the realm beyond couldn’t hide its nature.

The air stopped behaving like air. Sound dulled. Distance lost meaning. Even light seemed hesitant to cross the boundary. The world on the other side was not governed by this realm’s rules, and it had no ability to hide that fact.

Aurem felt it immediately.

For the first time since his birth, his instincts did not surge forward to dominate.

They screamed at him to stop. To run.

He hovered at the edge of the tear.

As he drew closer, the connection tying him to this world strained visibly. He could feel his anchor originating from the book that Kain held weakening, the invisible bond that kept him manifested here thinning with every heartbeat, as if his remaining summoning time was being shaved away simply by standing so close to the tear in the sky.

Then he saw it.

A colossal violet eye opened within the darkness beyond the opening.

It was so large that it took up all visible space, none of the face containing the eye being visible—vast beyond scale, filling the fractured sky on the other side. Its surface was a vast, unbroken violet iris, so large that Aurem could not see its edges. Veins of darker purple radiated outward from a pitch-black pupil the size of a mountain range, each slow contraction sending ripples through the surrounding darkness, as the Great Mother’s eye adjusted its focus upon him.

The longer he looked, the more wrong he felt. The weaker he felt. The more he felt as though he was being expelled by the world.

Approaching the abyss, the more the laws of this world were replaced by abyssal laws.

Those laws were not crude or chaotic, as one would expect of abyssals. They were refined, mature, and terrifyingly stable—principles that had been tested, discarded, stolen, reforged, and perfected across worlds that no longer existed.

As Aurem endured the influence of the abyss’ laws, he realized with cold clarity that they pressed down on him the same way this world’s laws pressed down on abyssals—but far more ruthlessly. It was suppression honed through consumption, laws harvested from destroyed worlds and refined into something absolute. Each slow rotation of that violet gaze carried the weight of annihilated realities, of civilizations reduced to nutrients for something that had learned how to perfect dominance itself.

Aurem felt his breath hitch. And he felt a completely unfamiliar emotion. Looking at the tiny reflection of himself in that deep gaze he recognized the emotion on his face that he’d only ever seen on the creatures he’d dominated…terror.

The terror did not even come due to an attack. There was no surge of power, no attempt to dominate him. The Great Mother merely observed—and that was enough to make the foundations of Aurem’s existence tremble.

Aurem’s instincts screamed in unison. This was not an enemy that could be challenged by him at all. Should he confront it, only death would await…that is if he wasn’t corrupted into an abyssal himself.

Between Aurem and the massive eye, the abyssal dragon hovered, its fear already forgotten. Confidence flooded back into its posture like a kitten having found a tiger’s backing.

“Hah!” it cried, voice sharp and childish. “You see? You see now? Run while you still can! Soon you will be nothing more than another servant for me to play with after Mother’s conversion!”

It laughed, high-pitched and ugly, emboldened by proximity.

“You’re nothing special! Nothing! I am the most special dragon across all the stars. Mother’s favourite child!” Its eyes were filled with an unhinged mix of madness, rage, and jealousy as it looked at Aurem.

Aurem did not answer.

He could not find the presence of mind to converse with this posturing insect before him.

Aurem recoiled further away from the opening into the Abyss.

The moment he pulled back, the pressure eased. Relieved that the eye opposite did not seem inclined to attack him, he continued moving backwards. The roles of cat and mouse had now flipped, causing Aurem to now flee back towards the fort.

Behind him, the abyssal dragon’s laughter followed, shrill and triumphant.

“That’s right! Crawl back!” it jeered. “This world belongs to us! Remember this moment, golden pest—remember who you can’t touch!”

Aurem’s claws curled until the air around them groaned.

Rage surged—pure, incandescent—but he did not turn back. He could sense that overwhelming gaze still locked onto him.

Aurem turned away.

His retreat was swift and controlled, but the fury in his wake scorched the air.

He descended with a fury. And it just so happened that there was a ready made punching bag to take said fury out on!-

The liquefying abyssal demigod barely had time to react before golden rings of light slammed into its malleable form making it immovable upon contact.

Aurem then proceeded to tear through it without pause. He clawed. He bit. It was a far cry from his usual languid manner of defeating enemies easily, and far more violent.

The demigod screamed as its body failed entirely, corrupted sludge vaporizing into nothing under Aurem’s dragon’s breath until not a droplet was left of it. or its domain.

It died without escape.

To the north, the battle turned decisively.

With the black dragon gone and abyssal domains collapsing, the human 9-star tamer and his dragon pressed together. Coordinated strikes shattered the Horned gravity abyssal’s failing defenses, and when it tried to retreat, it was too late. The dragon tore through its chest as the human’s follow-up attack destroyed what remained of its body.

It was the only remaining abyssal at the fort. The Wrath abyssal, not long after the Dragon abyssal began crying out for the Great Mother, had fled back as well.

Its cowardice saved it.

Meanwhile the Horned abyssal, perhaps due to its history of getting beaten by the demigod dragon opposite multiple times, had been so consumed by rage that it had not considered fleeing until it was too late.

The battlefield finally stilled.