The dragon's harem

Chapter 825: The Dragon's Pride



The demons looked at Mira with confused faces; most couldn't just walk between them, they knew she was with Merida, and they knew she knew they wouldn't harm her, but seeing a human running between them without fear was strange.

But, on a second glance, the demons could feel the immense lump of mana condensed inside her. It flew out like a gush of smoke, crackling with draconic magic far beyond anything they'd ever felt.

"It's about to explode!" Mira handed the failing device to Merida and turned toward the demons. They've been staring at her for a few seconds now, "Want something?" she asked with genuine interest, but they started sweating, she was different than anyone else.

The magic inside Mira belonged to Arad and is what's feeding the child in her womb. The demons could feel that, and to them, it was like Arad himself was sitting around Mira, growling at them.

The mark of a dragon, she can't be touched. Demons are far more sensitive than humans, and they can tell how dangerous Arad is just by looking at Mira.

"What is this? Should I bury it?" Merida said with a calm face as the smoke coming from the device intensified and it started sparking.

"Throw it away! As far as you can!" Mira gasped.

"To the desert then," Merida cracked her neck and took a deep breath, hunching back as she extended her arm. The mycelium in her body threaded deep into her muscles and bones, acting like a spring that holds power. For five seconds, she slowly compressed her muscles harder and harder until her arm turned blue and her veins bulged with black blood.

She stomped forward, the mycelium in her legs anchoring her firmly to the ground, and using all the power she stored, she threw the device with a blast, accelerating it enough to cause a shockwave.

Mira stared with an open mouth as Merida threw the device far behind the mountains into the edge of the desert. Seconds later, a massive flash of light illuminated the sky as an expose the size of the city behind them reached the clouds, shaking the ground into hell. Both demons and humans alike looked at the blast in horror; none of them could survive that.

"The hell was that?" Merida stared at Mira with a confused face.

"You know that cursed metal is found underground, but it only starts killing people when they dig it out. That's why I came up with the theory that enough earth could block the curse." Mira smiled, "I asked Merlin to use earth magic to compress stone around a piece of cursed metal to test if it that can stop the curse. The goal was to create an armor of compressed stone and dirt."

Mira with a smile, puffing her chest with pride... "The experiment was a success; the compressed stone blocked the curse. But we needed to shove almost twenty meters of stone into a tenth of a meter diameter with magic. This is where everything failed." Mira sighed, "With Merlin going with Isdis to the castle, she left the device with me. The spell containing the stone started to fail and I had no way to stop it. I honestly expected the stone shell to explode everywhere, but not that." She pointed at the mushroom cloud behind her.

"If it wasn't the stone that exploded..." Merida looked back, "The cursed metal." She threw a large spore at the mushroom cloud and soon confirmed. "The curse is everywhere in the smoke. It was indeed the cursed metal."

"Wait...that's bad, isn't it? What if the smoke came here, everyone would die." Mira gasped.

"Don't ask me, it's your fault." Merida gasped.

"Both of you are getting an earful with Eris." Aella flew above them with an army of fairies. "I'll clean it up."

"I expect you're experts in wind magic, right?" Aella looked at the fairies.

"Of course your highness. We're the proud people of Zephyr, the wind spirit." The fairies chanted after her as they raced toward the mushroom cloud.

Aella closed her eyes for a moment as she flew with the wind. The first time she ever took to the skies was on Arad's back, and now she can fly on her own. ^Zephyr, I'll be borrowing your magic for the first time. Please allow us a shard of your power.^

The emerald crown of Zephyr flashed above Aella's head and a pair of translucent, green- glowing butterfly-like wings emerged from her back in a burst of air. Green markings in the shape of leaves and stripes spread down her from her head to her legs, and her magic slowly shifted into that of spirits.

"I can't control it on my own. Help me as if it's high magic, elvish one if you can." Aella shouted as she threw her arms forward. Her skin started peeling off from the immense magic she was trying to tap.

Aella wasn't trying to pull any spell or cast anything, she only wanted to take control of a small fraction of what Zephyr had already cast. Zephyr's massive expansion, the atmosphere. Zephyr is the spirit of wind; everyone is living and breathing thanks to her expansion that keeps air around.

The fairies swarmed around Aella in flocks, their bodies glowing with wind magic. Even though Aella asked to be helped as if this was high magic, they found themselves less helping her and more trying to fix the mistakes she made when casting magic, acting as catalysts to extend her range, and as mana sources to fuel her.

"Spirit's Storm!" Aella shouted and the wind moved at a horrifying speed, almost blowing everyone away. The trees away from the city got pulled from the roots, and even Merida had to use her sword as an anchor as the demons shielded her from the wind.

The army ran back to the city as their tents started getting swept by the violent wind, almost as if a tornado struck the place, a powerful blast of air came rushing from behind the city and flew toward the mushroom cloud, blowing it away to the desert where Arad was. He will be

fine.

As the mushroom cloud disappeared, the marking on Aella's body faded with the crown, and she started falling down. The fairies caught her crying, "Our Queen!"

"I'm fine..." She gasped, "It's just... Zephyr made it look easy."

Zephyr's expansion, the atmosphere was far too big and charged with wind magic, tapping into it is like trying to swim in a violent river. One mistake, and you'll get swept away and

down.

Some of the fairies immediately started trying to heal Aella. Her skin had burned where the marks appeared as those were channels of extreme magic, far beyond what her body could

handle.

"You're bleeding a lot. Don't try to control Her Majesty Zephyr's power, you'll only hurt yourself." The commander of the fairies yelled at her.

"I didn't. I'm not that arrogant. I've merely tried to use the air around the city. That isn't even a hundredth of the full size of Zephyr's expansion." Aella could feel her mana was almost empty. She kept only a few drops to sustain her conciseness. ^I've only barely dipped a toe into Zephyr's power, and that got ripped apart.^ She could remember the drunk Zephyr doing a stupid dance on the dinner table after swimming in a barrel of beer. ^I need to ask her to teach me a few things when she comes back. A

Inside the castle, Isdis stared at the king who watched the chaos in horror from his window. "Like most kings. Uranus had married multiple women and formed a pride. I for one am a more diplomatic lady, taught and brought among royalty and nobility." She smiled, waving her hand toward the window. "I won't say the same for the other members of the pride." "Indeed." Merlin who sat beside her nodded, "I'm sure my word as an archmage holds some weight. But, what you've seen is more prof, isn't it?" Merlin smiled, "I wouldn't want to get on Uranus's harem's bad side."

"I too would love for you to meet Uranus on better terms." Isdis looked at the rest of the nobles, "Just imagine, what kind of man is keeping those women together? Vlad surely wasn't happy to see him my husband angry."

"I see...this all was a mistake, right?" The king giggled with a scared face. "We didn't know it was Uranus in the desert; we would never try to harm him. When we got your letter, we thought it was fake, sent from other kingdoms."

"Is that so? I'm happy we reached a peaceful conclusion." As Isdis was about to stand, a faint roar could be heard in the distance, and she looked at the window with a large smile on her

face. "That's..."

Arad had seen the flash of Eris's purple sun and Mira's nuke, and after feeling Aella's magic in the air, he knew his wives were up to something in the distance. Since the desert was a massive empty wasteland, his roar traveled far enough to reach them.