Chapter 655: Scaly Reunion
Helios wasn't always such a radical dragon of destruction.
At one point, he was a much younger, more positive being; even if he wasn't overly sentimental.
However, the death of his father Jormir at the hands of a dragon slayer radicalized him, and he began to see the importance of protecting his own people from further harm.
It was the pivotal moment of his life that completely reshaped him as a man.
Shortly afterwards, his mother also went missing, and he knew full well what that meant.
It was then that he started his long series of prayers to Ouroboros, and received a huge change of fate.
And now, he couldn't believe his very eyes.
Lumbering forth was a very big dragon covered in equally big scars.
His entire body was around 200 meters in height and more muscular than it was scaly.
He had to have been quite old for a true dragon, as his red scales had begun to take on a darker rust color.
Just by looking at him, it was clear that he had survived many great battles.
He was missing one wing, an eye, a horn, and even a few segments of his powerful tail.
"...How is this possible?" Helios asked hollowly.
"Do you know him, father..?" Iori's head was continuously swiveling back and forth between the two titans.
"Father?" The red dragon swung his head back and forth between the pair like his ancient brain was trying to put together a picture of the current scenario.
"I see... So my lineage has continued without my knowledge. That does offer my old heart some sense of comfort."
Finally, Iori seemed to piece together the gravity of the situation unfolding before his eyes.
Helios had never once mentioned his father or his mother to his children.
Iori had actually begun to believe that his father was created via willing himself into being.
That was a lot easier to believe than imagining his father as a baby to be raised by someone.
"...Mother told me that you were dead." Helios finally said.
"An over exaggeration of the highest caliber..." Jormir snorted.
Iori didn't know what he was expecting an ancient dragon reunion to look like, but this certainly wasn't it.
But then again, perhaps this was where his father's less than warm and pleasant personality had originated from.
"...I am glad to see that you survived." Jormir finally said.
'Oh there we go, that's progress.' Iori thought in the back of his mind.
"But what facade is this that you have brought here?" He stared at Abaddon. "What games are you trying to play, claiming to be the source of our origin?"
"It is not a game, father." Helios answered. "I know that you have felt it within your bones already. This is our origin, reborn anew."
Jormir did feel it.
And it was scary how much he wanted to believe in this tale.
But that was why he couldn't let himself slip here.
He refused to accept what was clearly a magically induced charade.
"He is our proud source, and yet he shapes himself in this contemptible small body? Not likely. It is more plausible that you have brought one of those weak willed dogs of humanity to bring us all to ruination."
The great dragon leaned down so that he could stare directly at Abaddon, who was still trying to stop the sea of dragon children from sniffing his pockets.
"I do not acknowledge you. You are likely the plaything of a lesser mortal who lies with his head in their lap all day. I implore you to leave my sight before I vaporize you where you stand."
"..."
In the moment, Abaddon understood how Yesh felt just a little bit.
Having your descendent / creation greet you with hostility and deny your existence in the same breath was just a tiny bit irksome.
'I should probably get him something to apologize... but what exactly do you gift the man who is the source of everything? But, first things first.'
"Bow your head."
Before Jormir knew what had happened, he buried his own snout so deeply in the dirt that he nearly struck precious metal.
"Grandson..." Helios called worriedly.
"Worry not, old man, I won't kill him. Something like this is hardly outside he scope of my expectations." Abaddon replied as he floated upwards.
By their very nature, dragons are an unruly sort.
Around 40% are lazy blokes and desire to be left alone. 59% are more aggressive and strive to be dominant above all, and 1% are sort of odd-balls with whole different interests that vary from dragon to dragon.
Nevertheless, most dragons in the multiverse would have the same attitude to Abaddon's sudden arrival as Jormir just had now.
But Abaddon didn't take too much offense to that, since he still just saw them as his prickly little descendants after all.
Whether they acknowledged him at first or not didn't change anything, since he could always give them a good talking to in order to clear up any confusion his identity, and make known the fact that there none above or equal to himself.
"I'll let you off the hook with this just this once... It will not happen again."
While Jormir screamed internally from his inability to so much as twitch his body, Abaddon floated up to the center of his large head and gave him a solid tap.
Jornir's burning orange eye rolled into the back of his skull as a variety of images flashed throughout his brain.
He saw lots of things, and perhaps even too much.
But most importantly, he saw the beginning of how they came to be, and saw a glimpse of what awaited them all at the end.
At the vision's end, he saw a silhouette of a dragon large enough to blot out the sun and crush planets between it's claws.
It's eight heads seemed to see the universe from every angle imaginable, and the large eye nestled within it's chest filled him with no small sense of dread.
When his vision returned to normal, he was sitting back on his hind legs panting furiously; terrified out of his mind and body.
Abaddon was still floating in the air in front of him with his hands clasped behind his back and a small smile on his face.
"Have we reached an understanding, Great Grandfather?" he asked innocently.
Jormir couldn't even bring himself to answer because he was still too afraid and shaken.
He was worried that if his tone of voice was too crass, or his speech too slow, then he would blink and find himself thought out of existence.
"I-I.."
"I'll be taking that as a yes."
Abaddon drifted back down towards the ground where the sea of children were still waiting for him to come back and play.
"Did you have to traumatize him?" Helios asked with a sigh.
"I barely did anything, old man. Things could've been so much worse you know?"
"You're too much like your mother... You never think you do anything wrong." Helios shook all three of his heads in unison.
Iori had a thought in the back of his mind that he wasn't sure if he should say.
"If sister is like that... Isn't it because you spoiled her so much that she always gets what she wants? It's a miracle that she didn't turn out worse than she is now..."
Helios looked at his son with a look of betrayal. "Who's side are you on, boy?"
"...Yours, father, I apologize."
"That's what I thought."
With their sidebar aside, Helios once again turned to the room filed with awestruck dragons.
"My kin! As you have just witnessed, I am the son of the once Red Dragon King Jormir the Deathless! Today, I come here offering my people a pathway out of our bleak fate!"
Helios proceeded to tell the colony where he'd been for the past several thousand years.
He even told them all about the army who were already fighting all across the world to free a planet that wasn't theirs.
Needless to say, this revelation roused something within the sleeping dragons.
"Today I implore you, my brothers and sisters! Do not stay down here and cower any longer! Dragons belong in the skies above! Let us burn all that sits below us!"
One by one, dragons rose from their hovels with renewed fire in their eyes.
With their roars of acceptance filling his ears, Helios was more elated than ever to be alive.
Everything he had done, all the riding twists and turns that life had thrown his way, it was all for this specific scene in this specific moment.
And there was absolutely nothing that could have tainted the satisfaction of the crusade that was yet to begin.
- An Unknown Pocket Dimension…
A desk jockey was seated at a monitor, absentmindedly sucking down a slurpee while simultaneously playing a candy game on his cell phone.
*Obnoxious sucking noises ensue*
Finally, the man's co-worker sitting to his right turned around and smacked him hard on the back of the head.
"Damn it, Ozzie, if I was blind I would think you was over here sucking dick! Keep it down, would you?!"
The desk jockey ended up spitting his slurpee all over his monitor.
"Christ, Elmer! Look at what you did!"
"No, look what you did. Didn't they teach you spitters are for quit-"
"Yea, yea, I get the joke!"
The young man finally ignored his old curmudgeonly co-worker as he began wiping off the monitor in front of him.
"Jeez, you really… huh?"
The man finally noticed that no matter how hard he tried to wipe his monitor clean, one single red spot remained on the holomap.
Finally, he realized that what he was seeing wasn't a cherry flavored mistake.
"N-No way… t-the abyss has made their move! Sound the alarm and get our forces out to that sector immediately, and for god's sakes somebody call the Leader!!"
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