First Demonic Dragon

Chapter 526 Lives Lived Before

Neither of them found chess to be particularly interesting, even if it was god himself playing.

Besides, this place was so tranquil and beautiful that it made anyone feel like they could lay down their burdens and rest easy.

"You two do not seem terribly interested." Azrael suddenly said.

"E-Eh? Sorry if we seemed rude, it\'s just that my husband only plays monster card games with our second son, so this is a bit too highbrow for him."

"My wife can\'t sit anywhere for long periods of time unless she has a beer and a trashy reality tv show in front of her."

Valerie and Abaddon suddenly stared at each other accusatorially.

""Are you trying to embarrass me in front of company??""

Azrael laughed soundlessly as he moved another wooden piece on the board.

"I.. don\'t believe that is what I meant.

The two of you sit at the font of all life and creation, the source of which everything that you know, and everything that you do not, came into being.

Yet you have no questions for us?"

Abaddon and Valerie looked at each other with a slightly embarrassed look on their faces.

This in turn only made Azrael laugh harder.

"I... What\'s with the big tree?" Valerie asked as she scratched her cheek.

"That is the tree of life. Your fa-... I mean Gulban, is it\'s artisan."

"I am suddenly much more uninterested." Valerie muttered.

However, Abaddon wasn\'t.

"Why does a tree need an artisan?"

Azrael held out his hand towards the tree.

"Please, see for yourself."

Abaddon and Valerie glanced at each other before shrugging.

Floating upwards, the couple circled the strange tree with golden leaves and gave it a curious eye.

Abaddon felt a strange sense of familiarity the closer that he got to it.

And upon close inspection, he realized exactly why he felt that way.

"These are... different universes and their timelines." he realized.

The striations present on the undersides of the golden leaves were certainly not normal.

They resembled ordinary leaf veins at first, but closer inspection revealed that they were actually pulsing with energy, and contain an uncountable number of souls.

"Gulban is responsible for the crafting of every universe and world design produced by the tree of life." Azrael explained.

"While the fates are responsible for mapping out the lives of mortals, Gulban builds their worlds and implants their expiration dates. Not every planet has a primordial to live on after all."

"That\'s right, punk bitch!" Gulban boasted as he pointed at Abaddon. "And inside of the timelines I craft, I am god! So try to put your hands on me again and see how well it works out for you in the-"

"Gulban." Asherah said solemnly.

"Fine..." Again, the maker folded his arms and went back to quietly brooding and shooting Abaddon death glares.

Ignoring him, Abaddon reached out and touched one of the leaves atop the tree.

In a twist he wasn\'t expecting, a feeling like a bolt of energy ran through him and his mind was flooded with new information.

He could see the dimension\'s beginning, middle, and end, all without pause.

He also appeared to have ingrained himself within the timeline accidentally too.

He could pick any moment at any time and any place and appear there whenever he liked and interfere however he liked too.

But he was pretty sure he wasn\'t supposed to do that.

\'Whoops…\'

"I would have thought that you designed things like this yourself, Mr. Creator." Valerie pointed out.

"He\'s gotten lazy in his old age…" Asherah muttered.

Yesh held up his hands in surrender. \'I am retired now. And besides, despite Gulban\'s brashness, he is a much more talented world builder than I. Eden and the White City are my best works."

An air of superiority now surrounded Gulban that Valerie quite frankly found annoying.

But at that moment, Abaddon finally remembered that he did have something to ask Yesh and Asherah after all.

He touched his chest with one of his hands and pulled out a small, ethereal shard that looked like a cracked diamond.

Even for these incredibly powerful beings in attendance, it was still blinding to look at.

"Why did you give me this without my knowledge..? Are you pitying me? Were you unconfident in my strength?"

Asherah and Yesh looked at each other momentarily before the creator shook his head.

\'Giving you that.. is a symbol of my faith and belief in you. That you will be able to achieve a future that I myself will be incapable of when the time comes.\'

\'...That is all you are going to-\'

\'That is alll that I am going to tell you, yes.\'

Feeling like he\'d been beaten somehow, Abaddon couldn\'t help but roll his eyes.

"Don\'t tell us you wish for us to take our gift back?" Asherah asked.

"Fat chance!" Overlord of the abyss or not, Abaddon was still a dragon, and a love of nice and shiny things was in his blood.

"Though... I hope that you two do not mind if I tweak it a bit."

Immediately, the already silent realm beyond realms became even quieter.

But if one listened closely, they could very clearly hear the sound of Azrael and Gulban\'s brains beginning to smoke as they tried to process Abaddon\'s last words.

"I\'m sorry... what did you say?"

"Great bleedin fuck, this brat is off his rocker..."

Abaddon put his broken spark back and folded all eight arms across his chest. "I say something strange to you both?"

""Yes.""

"I\'m not sure how."

"You are talking about tampering with primordial powers so old that they don\'t have a name, and so profound that I could not explain it with a hundred dictionaries."

"Uh-huh."

"...If you were as smart as you were handsome, I\'ve no doubt that every alternate dimension would have already been plundered by now."

Valerie snickered while Abaddon rolled his eyes. "I do not see the issue. I\'ve done something similar with Lucifer\'s sins, so I don\'t see why this should be much different."

"You stole my brother\'s sins and remade them??"

"Saying that I \'stole\' them feels a bit too-"

Valerie : "That\'s exactly what he did."

"Whose side are you on you little minx?"

"Always yours, but honesty is honesty, babe." Valerie kissed Abaddon on the cheek in apology and he accepted it while trying to keep his tail under control.

C

On the other hand, Azrael couldn\'t believe that the man in front of him had actually stolen power away from the light bringer and remolded it to suit his own purposes.

"...May I see them?" he asked in mild suspicion.

Abaddon saw no harm in it, so he cooperated with Azrael\'s request.

He waived his hand and seven ethereal spheres came floating out of his chest.

Azrael\'s eyes nearly rocketed from his skull.

\'How can this be...? He made them stronger and... erased their malevolence?\' the angel of death couldn\'t believe what he was seeing.

Fundamentally, the seven sins were an evil power that was designed to corrupt mortals, immortals, and anything else in between.

But these new sins were neither good, nor evil.

Like storms or volcanic eruptions, they were forces of nature.

\'I can not imagine... what this man could do with the heavenly virtues...\' the archangel thought.

Abaddon deposited all of the sins back into his body and Asherah finally spoke.

"It is your gift, so you may do what you wish with it, but I must ask... Is there a reason why you want to temper with the fabled spark?"

Abaddon shrugged.

\'...You are not going to-\'

"I am not going to answer, no." Abaddon smiled.

Against all expectations, Yesh found himself wanting to laugh.

In this moment, he felt like everything that he had done until this point was worth it.

He never got over the fate of what happened to his first creation.

To fix his mistake, he washed Abaddon\'s essence in the well of souls many times as he tried to bring him back to himself.

But eldritch essence doesn\'t just go away with a few quick scrubs.

In his first 1000 or so reincarnations, Abaddon was either schizophrenic or downright psychopathic.

Sometimes it was both.

Just when Yesh felt he may have to give up on his endeavor after millions of years of trying, Abaddon was reborn as Carter.

And even though his living conditions were terrible, he was mentally competent, save for his tendency to cope with depression with dark humor.

It was truly the best outcome he could have hoped for.

Abaddon sat back down on the ground with Valerie in his lap. "Though.. I suppose I could be persuaded to divulge my reasons if you shared something with me."

"Oh? I wonder what the new god of stories doesn\'t already know?" Asherah asked curiously.

Finally, Abaddon seemed to become slightly serious.

"My precious Thea... Who is her mother?"

Twice that day, the nexus of creation fell deadly silent.

Asherah seemed to be thinking about something rather intensely beyond her veil.

"Well.. since you have assumed care for the child, I see no harm in it. A few decades ago, the goddess-"

Suddenly, Yesh raised a single hand to stop her and stood up.

\'Wait. It seems someone is trying to find this place.\'

He reached out with but one finger and cut a hole in the fabric of the mythological space.

Taking a step back, he allowed a woman to step through.

\'It is odd to hear you of all people pray to me, child of beginning. I wonder what I could possibly do to aid you?\'

The woman bowed her head slightly in a respectful gesture.

"Pardon my intrusion, Yesh. I prayed to you because I needed your help in getting in contact with someone."

\'There exists someone who even you cannot find? Have you considered that they might not wish for you to find them?\'

\'Of course I have, but this is..@

Suddenly, the woman looked past the creator to a few of the guests in attendance.

Abaddon and the woman\'s eyes met, and he was able to get a good looker.

She was very beautiful, among the most popular models and celebrities in Tehom.

Her olive skin was divine and perfect, resembling a work of the finest art.

She had long raven hair that fell all the way down to her bare feet, and it flowed with all of the grace and freedom of an ocean.

Her body was curvaceous, yet slender and motherly; eliciting a lust in most men that was downright biblical.

At first glance, her eyes appeared to be purely black, but coming into closer

Abaddon didn\'t need to look in his library of memories to find out who this woman was, because he had already done it so much that he recognized her immediately.

\'Nyx!\'

Once the woman landed eyes on him, a glint of recognition shone in her mesmerizing black eyes.

"Oh? Seems I\'ve found him already. Abaddon, correct? I need your help."